Arena Angst and Redoubt Rant

Ulushnar's been doing Arena's now for three weeks, Wulfsblood joined the team last week. We've averaged something like 270 Arena points a week, which leaves Ulu just over halfway towards his new Shield, but Wulf a little under a fourteenth of the way towards his new Crossbow.

The grind's long, no doubt about it, although I've heard a rumour that some of the Hunter-friendly arena weapons may be getting a pricecut to compensate for the fact that we have to buy 2-3 weapons (a ranged weapons and 1-2 melee weapons). I'm intrigued to see if this will happen. That said, i'm also going to sign Wulf up for a 5v5 team to help boost his income.

Rumors continue to abound of an reexamination of the viability of Paladin Tanking in the endgame. A thread has been opened here discussing vital and useless talents in the various paladin trees, prompted by one of Blizzard's own Community Managers.

I only hope the overwhelming amount of Tankadins who tell them that the present form of Redoubt sucks will cause them to rethink it. As it stands, it's useful for a levelling tank, but it's near useless in the endgame. Because it's a proc, you can't count on it being there in boss encounters. As a result, a raiding tankadin has to stack enough avoidance to become uncrushable without it. As a result, if it procs then it's wasted, since you already have enough block/parry/dodge with Holy Shield up that the extra block gets pushed off the table.

Why do I even bother with this useless talent? Because it opens up Shield Specialization, which provides some useful mitigation when we do block. Ah well, it'll all come out in the wash, hopefully no later than patch 2.3...