Six weeks into WotLK...

Oh hai all!

A combination of flu and the festive period have kept me away from this thing.

Well ok, that's not strictly true, flu, festivities and a growing sense of boredom with the game.

I had unreasonably high hopes for the 10-man game when the 10/25 man switch was announced. I hoped we'd get challenging, fun fights like later Karazhan was when you were still mainly in blues, or hell how Zul'Aman was to anyone not entirely geared in T6 epics.

Naxx10 is a joke. We've managed our second clear now and the only boss we didn't at least two-shot was Heigan the Unclean, and that's because it's a fight you can't bruteforce. That said, when you have 60% of your DPSers averaging under 2k DPS mark on a run, you can't really say your force was that brute.

In the new year, we're going to start on the Dragons. We're aiming to kill Magylos and possibly start with Satharion + 1 drake and see how it goes. After they're dead, then it's a long boring farm of the same old content until they release Uldar. Given the fact that Uldar isn't on the Public Test Realms and they normally like to have raid content sit on there for two months at least, I'm not expecting to see Uldar until mid-March at the earliest.

I'm torn. On the one hand, Blizz have made it easier than ever to take your first steps into raiding. Heroic drops are on a par with 10-man drops and Heroics can be completed by a group of lvl 80s who possess at least one functioning brain between them. Even if that's too much, you can get a bunch of nice level 80 drops from craftable items and a few quest chains alone.

On the other, for the proportion of people who have raided and know their way around a boss encounter, there's very little for them. Fifteen all-too-familiar bosses in Naxx, some unchallenging heroics and two stand-alone boss encounters. The big guilds can have the special privilege of clearing out the above content in both 10 and 25 man mode, so they can get sick of it in half the time.

I can appreciate why Blizz have made the choices they have, but I can't help but feel they've failed to learn the lesson from Warhammer Online and Age of Conan's launch this summer. They made the journey to 80 fun and rewarding, but they simply didn't leave enough content there to keep their rabid fanbase amused until they could release the next instance.

Q3 profits aside, I can't help but feel if they'd delayed release until January and brought Uldar out at launch it would feel more satisfying. As it is, it looks very much like we have at least 2-3 months of time-killing ahead of us before the first ray of new content.

In Naxxramas

Ok, well I've been off this thing for a week now because of a particularly nasty strain of flu. I finally started feeling vaguely functional yesterday in just enough time to pack my bags and get ready for the exodus to the Frozen North for the holiday period.

Still despite being near-incapacitated by said Flu, I managed to lead and main tank Smart Casual's first three Naxxramas raids. Priorities, I haz them!

Wednesday saw us crack open the Spider and Plague Wings. These were undoubtedly the two easiest wings, and I used them as a gauge of the guild's ability to handle content that was, to most of us, pretty new. We managed to one-shot all the bosses, even when two of our DPS were locked outside during the Maexxna encounter, when I disconnected during the Noth fight, or when 70% of the raid failed to do the Heigan Dance correctly.

On Friday we returned to do the Construct and Military wings. This is definately where things got harder. We only one-shotted two bosses in there (Thaddeus and Gothik) with the rest taking 2-3 attempts to get down. The final encounter of the night, The Four Horsemen, ended up taking about four or five attempts to get the tank transitions down. It's still fairly straightforward, but still much more interesting than the average Karazhan fight.

Turning our attention to the final wing on Sunday, we had our work cut out. Sapphiron was a pretty frantic fight. A lot of running about and a lot of aoe damage, plus his brutal cleave and tailswipe made positioning a bitch. Three wipes and we killed him though.

Kel'Thuzad took much longer. I can't remember how many attempts in the end, but either people got into bad positions (and chained iceblocks) or we lost folks to void zones. The two Nerubian Guardians he spawns at 40% are exceptionally brutal to boot, since they start stacking a +15% damage buff every 15 secs. Ulu played offtank on the fight and died to them at 13 stacks of the buff, so it feels like you've got about 3mins to get him down from 40%-0.

After I was done. Well I dunno, I didn't feel much of anything. There was no big "woo-hoo", more of an "oh, that was it?"

Ah well, now we've got two dragons to amuse us until Blizz rolls Uldar out.

The Northrend Vanguard

So last night Ulushnar got Exalted with the Knights of the Ebon Blade and earned the Northrend Vanguard achievement. This basically means he's finished with the Championable factions and can go back to wearing his old guild tabard. It's kind of a shame, since I really liked the championing mechanic, although I wasn't a massive fan of the look of any of the faction tabards (The Argent Crusade one was arguably the best).

Still, Naxxramas 10 on wednesday! Ulu's been ready for weeks now, but I waited until most of the guild was 80 before we went in.

In other news, I got Graysun, my Deathknight to level 65 last night. I'm currently working him through Nagrand, and once I'm done there I figure I'll finish him off in either Blade's Edge Mountains or Shadowmoon Valley before I take him off to Northrend. The transplant can't come fast enough, since the unique "joy" of Outland levelling is the schizophrenic armor designs. He's currently wearing a mix of green, black and purple armor pieces, with a aqua-blue helmet which I've thankfully hidden.

I can't wait until I hit Northrend and get a set of generic Viking Armor in various shades of black, blue, red and dogshit brown! It may be slightly dull that all the armor has the same model, but it helps that that model is badass looking!

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying Blood Spec for levelling. The constant influx of health means there's practically no downtime whilst levelling, and since I intend to use a Blood PVP spec at 80, I'm getting used to the rotations I'll use then.

A few words to Puggers.

If you're gonna whisper a prospective tank and ask how much Health they have, then you're only going to attract idiots who think all they have to do is stack stamina.

If you're going to say stuff like "In my experience a tank's HP is a good indication of his skill" then you're pretty much an idiot.

If you do both these things and then skirt around the 1.1k DPS mark on a heroic, don't expect that tank to want to tank stuff for you in the future.

I don't mind someone being a jerk if they've got the skills to back it up. But if you're both ignorant of how my class and role works, and barely able to play your own, then you're not worth my time.

I'd rather quest, hell, I'd rather a holy priest solely by mob grinding than tank for you.

Oh and one more thing, without a healer or tank, you're not "looking for two more", you're "three DPS looking for group".

Game over man, Game over!

So this weekend Ulu did a few more heroics...

This included a PuG run to Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom. It started with the normal question about Health, which I passed with flying colors when I said "26k".

Anyway, it was a slightly wipey run. Partially down to a couple of dodgy pulls and partially down to the fact that none of the DPSers were able to create more than 1.1k DPS whilst Ulu was sailing ahead at the 1.6-1.8k mark without trying.

*sigh* Ah well, at least the Bracers of the Herald dropped. Also whilst doing heroics later with Guildies, Ulu got the last few badges for his Heroes' Redemption Handguards. That's ulu at 2 pieces of Tier 7 before he's even set foot inside Naxxramas.

Sunday continued in this vein, In between heroics, Ulu did daily quests and spent the gold on materials to level Wulfsblood's Leatherworking. This may be inefficent, but it beats levelling Wulf so I can get him into the zones that drop decent amounts of leather. In the end, I was able to make the Durable Nerubhide Cape for Ulu.

Finally on Sunday night, I did a Violet Hold heroic run and finally Lavanthor showed up! After we beat him up, he apologised for his tardiness by giving Ulushnar his Talisman. With it (and with swapping back to his Titansteel Shield wall Ulu stood within a couple of % of the point where normal hits cease to be an option.

The talisman was also the last tanking drop that Ulushnar wanted from Heroics. From this point, he's in them purely to help guildies get their stuff, and of the occaisional DPS drop along the way.

#403

Oh my, I appear to have gone over 400 posts without realising it. Ah well, not like much of it matters. I could reminise about early victories in Zul'Gurrub or Molten Core to my readers but chances are either:

a) You did these encounters to death yourself or
b) They were something you went to as a tourist after The Burning Crusade was released.

Instead, I'll keep talking about what's happening here and now.

Ulushnar is something of a victim of my success. When I started Smart Casual I envisioned keeping the numbers small to minimize rotation in raids and shorten the length of time it takes us to master difficult fights.

In practical terms however, when you're one of three tanks in a guild with eighteen members, you get asked to do a lot of heroics. And if you were directly responsible for keeping the number of tanks in your guild low, it seems churlish to refuse.

That said, I'd like to help the last few guildies who haven't hit 80 get those last few levels. Since a lot of the guild has raced past them, it's hard for them to get groups to instances and they're falling further behind the rest of the group.

I can't please both groups, but I also recognise this will be a temporary situation. In a couple of months when we're ass-deep in Naxx and people have spent a ton of badges and are currently looking at their alts, the situation will be less desperate.

Guess I'll just have to balance my time better before then.

Fun with double entendres!

So Ulu's been working on Sons of Hodir rep, but I'm unsure about thier intentions...

Once he got Friendly with them, they asked him to blow their horn and polish their helmet...

Now he's Honored and in addition to these duties he's now gotta thrust their spear...

If there's a quest at Revered that involves a sack and some jewels, I'm running for it!

New toys!

So Ulu got some new toys tonight...



The Red Sword of Courage



The Royal Crest of Lordaeron

And also the Chained Military Gorget, but that one doesn't have a cool graphic.

I cannot begin to describe how much more bad-ass Ulushnar looks with Lich King gear!

Post-Weekend update 01-Dec-08

So last night, Ulushnar got the loot 100 Emblems of Heroism achievement. Given he hadn't set foot in a Heroic before last Monday night, that should give you some idea of what he spent a lot of the last week doing...

...Yeah, Ah well, it's winter and being outside isn't good anyway.

Still on the plus side, ulushnar now has the T7 chest and is currently working on badges for the neck. At this rate though, he'll outgear Naxxramas 10 before the guild's ready to set foot in it.

This week I'm going to try and tone it down a bit. There's a couple of target heroics that I'm going to run, but I also wanna spend time helping the last few guildies not at 80 to get there so we can all join the Heroic frenzy.

I've also been logging in Wulfsblood a bit. I haven't really been levelling him so much as committing mass genocide on the Rhinos of the Borean Tundra. Our guild's only leatherworker has been having connection problems, and some members of the guild want the epic cloaks available at 440 LW, so I put my nose to the grindstone and got it done. Wulf's currently at 423 LW, and is working through my backlog of Eternals from Mining and Engineering to get to 440.

Protection DPS is no longer a joke!

Yesterday, Ulushnar broke a few milestones. He now has 25.3k health unbuffed(over 1.8k Stamina) and over 900 Strength, he also has over 2.1k Attack Power, and his damage is getting silly as a result.

Before the launch of Wrath, Ulu was lucky to end up in the top half of the DPS meters. In an AoE instance, he might just nudge ahead of a underperforming single-target DPSer. In Wrath now, Ulu can routinely nuke his way to the top of the DPS meters in AoE instances. Even in single-target fights, Ulu's Shield of Righteousness is a hefty chunk of DPS every 6 seconds, and Hammer of the Righteous continues to be consistantly awesome.

Of course he still goes oom in about 30 secs if he isn't getting hit, but you can't have everything, right?

Titansteel: The Waiting Game

I've never really played an Alchemist. I mean, I tried to make Ulu one at one point when a friend convinced me that the Alchemist's Stone was "the shizzit" for tanks, but it never really stuck. I certainly never got all the cool transmutes people used to go on about. Which meant I never had to deal with the sucky cooldowns.

With my experiences over the last few days, I'm glad I never followed through on that profession. Ever since I started smelting Titansteel, it's been one torturous day after another waiting for the 20 hour cooldown on the next bar to be up. I'm swimming in materials, since I often trip over a couple of Titanium nodes whenever I go mining and my Mote Extractor has me swimming in Eternals.

However, knowing I still have 40 hours of cooldowns between Ulu and his Tempered Titansteel Treads makes me sad somehow. Ah well, guess tomorrow evening isn't too far away.

More Heroics.

Well last night it was back to the Heroic grindstone.

First up was Violet hold, the heroic daily. The first waves were pretty easy. We scarcely knew we were in a heroic until we hit the first boss, Zuramat the Obliterator. Took us two or three wipes to get the gimmick down, but after we did, the rest of the instance proved no challenge.

Also proving no challenge was Heroic Stratholme. There's a timer even there where if you clear to just before the last boss within 25 minutes, you get to fight an additional boss just before him. We cleared to him with no wipes and a few seconds to spare, but were unable to get to him in time. This heroic was not significantly harder than the normal.

And after this instance, I was able to buy the Libram of Obstruction, so go me!

After that we decided to try Heroic Halls of Lightning for the normal daily. It was, all things told, pretty damn brutal. The second and last bosses provoked some wipeage, but we got there in the end.

Into Heroics...

I've been meaning to post screenshots of Ulu's bad-ass new gear. The problem is as soon as I take one, he gets something new.

Case in point, I took this yesterday morning:



And I've already replaced my trusty lvl 74 quest reward axe with a Heroic Utgarde Keep drop!

Yes that's right, last night Ulu assembled a few level 80 guildies and went to test the heroic waters. And we found them both hot and full of sharks. Well metaphorical sharks at least. And metaphorical heat as well I guess.

The party was Ulu, Buachampoo (Holy Paladin), Frozt (Elemental Shaman), Eleinya (Demonology Warlock) and Vordar (Resto Shaman). That's right folks, two healers. Possibly not the best optimized group but since they were:

a) The only available level 80s in my guild and
b) Two couples who were unwilling to play separately, I took what I could get.

We tried Azjol'Nerub first, since that was the daily. We got owned hard and often on the mini-boss waves before the first boss. We just weren't able to clear one group before the second spawned. With more DPS it might have been more managable.

After a few wipes, we gave up and tried Heroic Utgarde Keep. It was more of a leisurely stroll than the zerg we normally do, but it was manageable. Didn't feel significantly harder than a normal lvl 80 instance, although saying that, I was restrained and only pulled one group at a time rather than my normal 2-3. Also as I mentioned, the first boss gave Ulu a shiney new sword, and I spent the night levelling ulu's sword skill from 373 to 400.

Our spirits bouyed by this success, we pressed on to try Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. And for a while it seemed fine. The first two bosses and the trash surrounding them wasn't difficult. However, when we hit the gauntlet around Skadi the Ruthless and wiped. And wiped. And wiped some more. I think it took us an hour to finally bury that bastard, first it was surviving the Gauntlet long enough to get the 5-6 harpoons needed to dismount him, secondly it was getting him under control fast enough so he doesn't kill half the group when he lands.

In the end I used the following macro to get him under control:

/target Skadi
/cast Exorcism

And we killed him without any deaths. He even apologised for his rough treatment by giving Ulu a new belt. After that we cleared to King Ymiron, and after wiping a few times to his glowy ball o' death he too kissed floor in our honor. Sadly he didn't drop his sword, but I guess two weapon upgrades in one evening would have been silly.

So there y'go, some highs, some lows. The group wasn't perfectly optimised, but we had fun, and I ended up with seven badges towards Ulu's Libram. Only eight more to go! Heroic's seem to be the way forward for a group of 80s with decent gear and their heads screwed on. Also the rep gains are tremendous. Mobs give 2-3 times the rep they do in normal, and bosses give 5 times the amount.

Violet Hold's the daily Heroic today. I wonder what it's like...

On the "Difficulty Curve" (Or lack thereof)

I've already heard grumblings from the first couple of level 80s in my guild (a Prot Warrior and a Ret Paladin) about how "easy" the levelling process was. My response is "of course it is"!

The new level cap isn't just about giving players new abilities and more talents, it's about devaluing their current gear to the point where they can offer them reasonable upgrades. In that respect, it's a hill between the players and new content. People can charge up and over it if they have the time and energy, or they can leisurely walk over it and enjoy the view. I suspect most of us fall between those two camps.

I'm not going to comment on Heroics or Naxx10 until I've had a chance to do them, but if they're as straightforward as I've heard then it can only be a good thing. The one thing that The Burning Crusade lacked was a decent Molten core-type entry-level raid, womewhere where an entire guild can go in and gear up on, or that experienced/well-geared guilds can just sidestep completely and move onto the next content.

I know folks are going to disagree with me here, but I think Blizzard have got the balance right this time.

Ding & Stuff

Well a lot got done this weekend.

On saturday morning, Ulu did a couple of circuits of Lake Wintergrasp, the world PVP zone. He wasn't hunting Hordes however, he was looking for the abundant Saronite and Titanium nodes the zone contained. After an hour's mining, he returned to Dalaran and started working his Engineering to 440 so he could make the Armored Titanium Goggles. I had more than enough Titanium and Ulu had been lucky enough to find two Sky Sapphires whilst mining. I had to get the Frozen Orb and Heavy Borean Leather from the Auction House, but it wasn't much of an expense (well ok, the Orb was 1.1K, but hell, it's only Gold, right?). Still, getting the Goggles at level 79 was fairly decent.

After that, it was back to the grind. Saturday's pretty much a blur for the most part. I did some quests in Icecrown I think and I can remember stepping into CoT: Stratholme for the first time with some guildies (fun instance, I really liked it!) and I also did an Utgarte Pinnacle run with a PuG (which actually wasn't horrid, despite a few wipes on the gauntlet.) What I do remember clearly was that Ulu hit 80 in Drak'tharon Keep whilst doing a run for some lower-level guildies.

After they went to Bed, Ulu returned to Icecrown and ended up doing a lot of quests for both The Argent Crusade and The Knights of the Ebon Blade. He ended up Honored with both, which earned him some nice Legplates and Boots.

Yesterday, A guildy managed to get his Blacksmithing up to 440, and was able to make me a Titansteel Shield Wall (this time the Frozen Orb was a more "reasonable" 740G). He even loaned me a Titansteel Bar while my own smelt was on cooldown. I'd been 80 for about 12 hours and I already had two epics!

After that I decided to put the Championing system to the test and work Ulu up to Revered with the Argent Crusade. Championing gives you Reputation with a faction if you wear their tabard in a level 80 Dungeon or Heroic. Ulu needed about 7k rep to get there, so it wasn't easy. He ended up running The Oculus (three times!), Utgarde Pinnacle (twice), CoT: Stratholme, and the Halls of Lightning. After running those seven instances, Ulu was still about 1k short of his rep goal, so I had to finish things off with a daily quest in Zul'Drak and a quick wowhead-assisted scour of Icecrown for any quests I'd missed. I managed it in the end and crowned Ulu's goggles with a shiney new head enchant.

The moral of the story is this: Short, trash-light Dungeons may make for fast clears, but they're murder to grind rep in.

As of last night, we have seven level 80s in the guild, with another few on their way. With a slightly larger population, it might be possible to start Heroics!

The Rep's the thing.

Ulu's not even level 78 yet (about 2/3rds of the way there) and I'm thinking about rep grinding.

Looking at the (very healthy) list of Tanking rep items, two factions stand head-and-shoulders above the rest as ones to get Revered with ASAP.

The Wyrmrest Accord have one of the best pre-raid tanking cloaks at Honored and a really nice tanking chest at Revered. Luckily having done almost all the Dragonblight quests at this point, I'm just past Honored with them.

The other faction, the Argent Crusade will be a bit more work. I'm not even Friendly with them yet, although there are quest chains in Zul'Drak and Icecrown I haven't yet touched. Still they have really nice legs at Honored and the Tanking head enchant at Revered.

Luckily both factions are championable, so once Ulu starts the level 80 Dungeons he'll be able to get rep with them faster. I think I'll make Wyrmrest my first goal before settling into getting the Crusade to Revered.

Still weekend's coming. I wanna get Ulu to 80 and do some instances with friends. I'm also tempted to brind Wulfsblood out of mothballs and bring him to Howling Fyjord for a cooking/skinning/leatherworking zerg. I have almost all the mats now for Ulushnar's engineering goggles, but I need Leather badly.

Oh For The Wings...

Ulu hit level 77 last night. I was getting bored with finishing off Dragonblight and a brief foray into Grizzly Hills didn't exactly excite me. I did a Violet Hold run with guildies, and then as I was thinking about what to do next, a friendly NPC in Dalaran advised me to seek out Hemet Nessingwary in the Sholazar Basin.

To the veterans amongst you, Hemet Nesingwary is synonymous with mass animal slaughter in the wilds of Stranglethorn Vale and Nagrand. Some directed grinding sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered.

It worked. I've pursued most of the quests there towards their completion and Ulu hit 77 last night, which enabled him to spend 1k Gold and learn Cold Weather Flying.

Now Ulu's wings (or rather chopper blades) are back in play. This is going to make the last three levels so much easier!

Instances Thusfar

Ok, to date, Ulushnar has tanked the following instances:

Utgarte Keep: (lvl 70-72) Fun intro instance, three bosses and a lot of melee mobs. Clearable within half-an-hour by most groups, could become Shattered Halls 2.0 on Heroic.

The Nexus: (lvl 71-73) Fairly pretty instance marred for me by the sheer amount of Silencing/Manaburning mobs. Reminds me a lot of Botanica for some reason, although the architecture is quite different. Four bosses and about a 45min clear.

Azjol-Nerub: (lvl 72-74) Incredibly short instance with three bosses and maybe 6 real trash packs (9 if you count the three mini-boss packs before the first boss). Shouldn't take an experienced group more than 20 mins to clear, but remember to cleanse poisons on the second boss. This entire instance is an arachnophobe's nightmare!

Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom: (lvl 73-75) Largest instance thusfar. Four bosses and a massive epic feel, although you might spend nearly an hour down here until you get the route down. The last boss has my favourite gimmick thusfar, which I won't share for fear of spoilers.

The Violet Hold: (lvl 75-77) This is basically Black Morass, with the additional gimmick that the first two bosses are randomly chosen from six. Not going to be an easy place to go loot farming.

And that's as far as I've tanked to date. I've been mostly running for guildies who haven't levelled as far yet. I really like the design of the encounters in the instances. The bosses have interesting gimmicks to learn, but nothing that will insta-wipe an inexperienced group. I'm really looking forward to checking out the other instances.

Get a Venture Co. Libram of Protection!

Ok, so you've hit level 75, you've got your shiney new Shield of Righteousness and you're wondering how to give it more oomph.

Well if you're like me and were never lucky enough to get the Libram from Mother Shazzrah in Black Temple, fear not, there's a nice option that will only take about half an hour to get.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Venture Co. Libram of Protection!

If you want to buy it, you have to accumulate 30 Venture Coins, which are obtained by doing PVP-type quests in Grizzly Hills. These are easily obtained by doing three quests in the Venture Bay subzone:

Smoke 'Em Out - This is easy, just throw smoke bombs into groups of the Venture Co. Stragglers. If you get too close and aggro some, just throw them at your feet and they'll go running. (Horde Equivalent)

Keep 'Em At Bay - Kill ten Horde units or players. I opted to kill units because I am a carebear at heart, but even if you opt to kill players, this is easy as pie. (Horde Equivalent)

Down with Captain Zorna - Kill an elite standing on the docks by the Horde ship on the bay. She wasn't hard, I managed to duo her with a Prot Warrior no problem and she can probably be solo'd. (Horde Equivalent)

Each of these quests gives you 10 coins, for a total of 30 coins which will let you get your Libram. The only wrinkle to these quests is you have to be PVP flagged whilst you have them in your logs. On my server the folks there were more concerned with doing the quests but your server may be different. If you're doing this as Prot, it may be worth roping a few mates in to help.

I'd rather be levelling

So Ulu hit level 76 last night, not long after completing an epic quest chain in Dragonblight (no spoilers, but go there and do every quest you can, you won't be dissapointed!). After that was done, I kinda lost the desire to do much more levelling that evening, and ended up tanking a few instances instead and did some mining. The Sholazar Basin's still largely deserted on my server so it's easy enough to run around there a couple of times a day and pick up a load of Saronite Ore, and if I'm really lucky, some Titanium. I've been slowly getting Ulu's Engineering up as well, but I've diverted a lot of my ore to a friend who's levelling Blacksmith and making him some spiffy armor.

Back at work today and working through the deluge of stuff. Tonight's going to be more quests and some instances. I'm aiming for 77 by tomorrow night.

A brief update

Well the WoW Blogsphere's been quiet for the last few days because everyone's been too busy playing the expansion. Normally I'd use my lunchbreaks at work to offer my own insights, but I've been off for a few days of annual leave.

I'm not going into much detail. Ulushnar has been my number one concern and he's currently at about halfway through level 75. I haven't exactly been going flat-out, but nor have I been taking my time. He's completed almost all the quests in the Borean Tundra and Howling Fyjord starter areas, and he's making a good crack at the Dragonblight ones. He's also led a load of runs into The Nexus, Utgarde Keep and Azjol'Nerub.

Initial thoughts are I'm having a fecking ball! Blizzard have made a few nice changes like spreading out the quests among smaller hubs rather than have you running back to the same 2-3 hubs in every zone.

I love the asthetic of the place as well. After the vaguely sci-fi overtones of Outland (which I didn't mind), it was nice to get down to some good, honest fantasy. And with that comes good, honest fantasy-looking armor.

I've been merrily replacing Ulu's mix of T5, T6 and Badge gear with a hodge-podge of crafted items and a few instance quest rewards. They've done a much better job this time of making all the levelling armor drops having a similar look and feel, so the end result is Ulu looks more like a scary, bad-ass viking and less like he fell asleep and someone drew graffiti all over his armor. The biggest problem I've seen is Ulu's avoidance is in the toilet. By the time I hit level 75, most of the outland items are giving me about 2/3rd the values they were at 70, simply because of the way Ratings scale. For levelling and instancing, I've basically reduced myself to aiming for roughly the same amount of Stamina, keeping enough Defense Rating for at least 5.4% uncrittability and a good chunk of Strength on top of that.

He hit 75 about 3 hours ago and I've spent the time since then playing with Shield of Righteousness. Even in his slightly gimped gear, Ulu hits for 1.4k on it, or 2.8k on a crit. That's a tasty chunk of threat, and it actually gives Ulu some meaningful DPS.

I'll write more on Tuesday afternoon when I'm back at work. Laters.

Incoming + Defense Advice

So it's almost here. Excited folks? I know I am!

For those of you unsure about what to do, Ciderhelm over at Tankspot has made a nice guide for folks. It's slightly Warrior-centric, but most of it applies to Tankadins as well, except for the bit about stacking Shield Block value, which really on applies to Warriors before level 75 when we get Shield of Righteousness. And we probably don't need quite as much food/healing potions.

For me, I'm sticking with Ulu's main tanking gear as shown in the armory for the most part. I'm going to keep a few spare +Defense items on hand for when the increase in the Defense Rating-to-point but I'm not bothered too much if I become slightly crittable in the levelling dungeons. I could create a secondary "DPS" set which focussed on Strength/AP, but that just feels like too much effort for not enough reward.

On the subject of +Defense though, I'd advise each and every one of you to keep your eyes out for items with a high amount of +Defense Rating as you level. Currently to reach uncrittable at level 70 we need 328 Defense Rating (2.34 Defense Rating = 1 Defense Skill). At level 80 that becomes the rather frightening 689! (4.92 rating = 1 skill). Then again, with the removal of Crushing blows from Raid bosses, that 689 is our only hard-and-fast gearing requirement, so get it, and then get other tanking stats as you like.

A Call For Calm

This started as a reply to Galoheart's quitting post I figured I'd open it out to a (slightly) wider audience.

It's easy to feel put upon, to see these nerfs as some massive anti-Paladin conspiracy, but for some reason I'm not donning my Tinfoil hat to keep Blizz out of my thoughts just yet.

The timing could have been better I'll admit, but I choose to believe that they had used that time to exhaust every other option before attempting a drastic, 11th hour move.

I believe they'll fix Prot damage if it needs fixing. Of course until we see the numbers at 80 with Shield of Righteousness, we won't know how much extra damage we need to be competitive.

There's an easy switch to flip in order to give Prot and Holy their judgements back, and that's to bake a damage increase back into Judgements of the Just/Pure. I'm not saying that's the route they should take, but it's certainly the one I'd take.

There are three things I know:

1. Blizzard is intending tanks to do meaningful damage, rather than relying on stacked threat multipliers.
2. Blizzard has stated repeatedly that Paladins are intended to be Main Tanks in WotLK in a way they weren't really intended to be in TBC.
3. This latest raft of changes won't be the last by a long shot. Just because we're down now doesn't mean we'll stay there.

National Lampoon's Tankadin Nerfs

I watched Animal House a few too many times as a kid...

Knaughty: War's over, man. Ghostcrawler dropped the big one.
Ulu: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Bara: Germans?
Snake: Forget it, he's rolling.
Ulu: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard]
Ulu: the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[runs out, alone; then returns]
Ulu: What the fuck happened to the Tankadins I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest expansion of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Ulu, they nerfed our seals." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Kel'thuzad? he's a dead man! Magylos? dead! ARTHAS...
Bara: Dead! Ulu's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with Warrior tanks, maybe spec Ret, that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
Ulu: We're just the guys to do it.
Knaughty: Let's do it.
Ulu: *Let’s do it*!

Names shamelessly lifted from Maintankadin regulars.

Back & Laughing in the Face of Nerfs.

Well, it's been a while since my last post.

I had a week's annual vacation to take last week, and without coffee breaks and lunchtimes spent in the dreary industrial estate where my office is situated, I just didn't have the motivation to update this thing.

Instead, I played Fable 2 and read with a sigh the reactions to our latest nerfs. It's not the nerfs themselves that bother me, sure they're far-reaching, but Wow is a constantly changing game, and numbers go up as well as down. No, it's the reaction from a community I had thought until now was reasonably intelligent, mature and thick-skinned that has really depressed me.

And then I realised today that it mostly was. Most of the people who I've looked to for intelligent and reasonable responses to the changes have given them. However, they've been drowned out by the overwhelming sea of "ZOMG we sucks nau", or "lol, I reroll Warrior" posts.

For the most part, I can see where Blizz has been coming from. They've tried minor changes and bug fixes to balance Retribution and when it didn't work, they went and turned the biggest knobe they could find to see if that fixes the problem. It's not brilliant science, but it's a move out of desperation, which is a relatively human thing.

And now they're waiting for the smoke to clear to assess the effects of these changes and to help those worst hit. I can understand that, and even with the game being released in a little over a week, we still have 3-4 weeks before there'll be serious raiding at 80. That's hopefully going to be enough time to collect data and assess the best fixes to make. That assumes that we do need these fixes at 80.

For what It's worth, I'm staying Prot and levelling Prot. I did it 1-70 back when things were nowhere near as good for us as they are now. When they open up dual speccing, I'm going to grab Retribution as Ulu's second spec, but only because it'll make one-tank fights smoother to have as much DPS as possible.

Speaking of Nerfs...

Over the weekend this happened to Paladins on the Beta Server:

Holy

* Seal of Wisdom now deal [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage)
* Seal of Light now has a chance to heal for [ 15% of AP + 15% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 28% of AP + 28% of Spell Power ])
* Seal of Light now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] (down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ]) holy damage when unleashed.
* Seal of Righteousness now grants each melee attack [ 2.2% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 4.4% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ] additional Holy damage. (Down from [ 2.8% of Melee Weapon Speed * AP + 5.5% of Melee Weapon Speed * Spell Power ])


Protection

* Seal of Justice now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 1 ] holy damage when unleashed. (Down from [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 1 ])


Retribution

* Judgement of Command Holy damage reduced from 56% to 45%.
* Blessing of Might (Rank 8 ) and Greater Blessing of Might (Rank 3) now increase AP by 306. (Up from 305)
* Seal of Corruption now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional holy damage over 15 seconds. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
* Seal of Corruption now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
* Seal of the Martyr now make all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
* Seal of the Martyr now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old - [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
* Seal of Blood now make all your melee attacks deal [ 22% of mw ] to [ 22% of MW ]. (Down from [ 28% of mw ] to [ 28% of MW ])
* Seal of Blood now deals [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of mw ] to [ 16% of AP + 25% of Spell Power + 36% of MW ] Holy Damage when unleashed. (Old - [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of mw ] to [ 20% of AP + 32% of Spell Power + 25% of MW ] Holy damage)
* Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 15% of AP + 8.8% of Spell Power ] additional Holy damage over 15 sec. (Down from [ 19.2% of AP + 9.6% of Spell Power ])
* Seal of Vengeance now deals [ 14% of AP + 22% of Spell Power + 1 ] Holy damage. (Down from [ 17.5% of AP + 28% of Spell Power + 1 ])
* Judgement of Wisdom now restores 1% of the attacker's maximum mana. (Down from 2%)
* Judgement of Light now has a chance to heal the attacker for [ 10% of AP + 10% of Spell Power ]. (Down from [ 18% of AP + 18% of Spell Power ])

Basically we got a blanket reduction in our damage output. Why? Because the new Retribution Spec was doing too much damage.

On the one hand I agree, yes Retribution was doing way too much. However the reductions here don't just affect Ret, they affect the relatively meager damage output of Holy and Protection as well.

Holy's already one of the lowest-DPS healer classes out there, and Protection was just about holding it's own. With the changes, it's going to be even less attractive to level either of these spec. Looks like it's going to be an uphill struggle levelling Ulu as Protection in WotLK.

They're promising band-aids for Prot and Holy in the future, but with about two weeks until release, I'm not holding my breath.

More fun in Nerfsville!

So last night, after a week of crashing instance servers, I finally got to see the inside of the post-nerf Zul'Aman...

...And an hour later I was done. Even with a wipe on the Eagle (totally my fault, I pulled whilst some folks were still on the stairs, and they were trapped outside) we beat every timer and one-shotted every other boss.

Seriously, if you're in a group who could complete Kara pre-patch, go have your funsies in Zul'Aman now. Even Zul'jin was a piece of cake.

Apart from that, Ulu's been slowly working on achievements and killing time until the release of Wrath. Three weeks to go now! There also appears to be a Zombie Invasion that needs quelling.

Old School Weekend

People shouldn't mistake my last post for annoyance, it was more like amusement at a trivial instance being further trivialised. I thought it was funny.

However, TyphoonAndrew had this to say on the matter:

Given that there were Kara/Gruul's guilds in BT who were able to drop bosses, I am expecting this new found power we have to be smashed by the Wrath content. It might be easy now, but it will get equalised. And we'll never do Kara again after this, because how many people bother with MC now?

That comment will be ironic in light of what I did this weekend.

On Friday night I did four Heroics in quick succession: Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog and Shadow Labyrinth. Achievements was the name of the game, and we played it well. I didn't bother to time most of the runs, but I did notice in Slave Pens that the greater blessings I applied at the start had seven minutes left when Quagmirrian died. We cleared the instance in 23 minutes.

On Saturday, I worked on my achievements with Ulushnar. The Hallows Eve event arrived, which meant another event boss to farm a certain number of times per day, this time in the Scarlet Monastery graveyard. Headless Horseman isn't an especially hard boss to a group with decent gear, and there's some pleasure to be had in pummelling his Tim Burton-Fanboy ryhme-spouting face.

After farming that, I took a break and came back in the evening to join a conglomeration of Earthen Ring raiders for some oldschool fun. We preceeded to clear both Blackwing Lair and Molten Core in a bit over 2 hours. It was kind of nice to see the old bosses again, although 40 raid-geared level 70s kinda made mincemeat out of both zones (Ragnaros in particular died in 18 seconds).

Sunday involved more random achievement filling and Horseman-killing, as well as another spot of sitting offline for an hour and a half when Blizzard shut down the server in the middle of the afternoon. In the evening, Ulu hooked up with the oldschool raiders again for a zerg through the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. Unlike Blackwing Lair and Molten Core, it was content I hadn't seen with Wulfsblood pre-TBC, so I got the chance to experience it, albeit at breakneck speed. (somewhat akin to taking a tour in a Formula One car)

Well it was a fun way to spend a weekend, but I'm still finding myself counting the weeks until the release of WotLK...

Kara after 3.0

It's a joke, a sad joke.

Five people in ZA/Badge gear could probably farm it. As it was, with 4 DPS, 2 Tanks and 3 Healers:

*Moroes died after his first Vanish.
*Maiden managed one Repentance.
*Big Bad Wolf got one Red Riding Hood.
*Nightbane never got a fear off.
*Illhoof died during his first Weakened.
*Netherspite died during his first banish.
*The Prince got off two infernals.

It feels more like Upper Blackrock Spire than ever before.

3.0: The Crashening

Well the pile of gigantic ass that forms the fetid core of Earthen Ring raised it's ugly head last night and refused me access for most of the night. When I did get on, it was to a bunch of failing mods and epic lag.

However, on the forums over the last few days there have been some misconceptions about the Tankadin in 3.0 I feel the need to correct.

1. Stop spamming Consecrate on one-to-three-mob pulls! It used to be a good, solid reliable form of Holy Damage. These days we have Hammer of the Righteous and the newly-instant Avenger's Shield in the place of it. In bigger pulls however, use it freely since your mana income from Blessing of Sanctuary should take care of it. Our mana income is better, but it's by no means inexhaustable.

2. On the subject of Hammer of the Righteous, if you don't like the sound of this ability then you have no joy in your heart! What could be better than beating your enemies in the face with a Frying Pan made of your faith?

3. The need for 490 Defense didn't go away just because Anticipation changed and we lost some +Defense from items. Since it's the only hard gear requirement we have for tanking raids these days, just accept it and do what you need to get it.

4. I kinda like being able to gear like a tank rather than a caster in Plate. Ulu's Attack power went up from a wimpy 444 to a somewhat respectable 1128. His Expertise also shot up to 26 in his threat gear (hello Shard of Contempt!)

Tonight, if the server behaves, I'm going to "test" out Ulu's new tanking toys in Karazhan.

Incoming 3.0

Well I finished downloading patch 3.0.2 this morning and installed it. I also updated my add-ons. In theory, I should be good to go when I get home in 2 hours time.

I also took the precautionary measure of parking myself in front of the Paladin Trainer in Stormwind to avoid the lagfest that will be Shattrath on Patch Day.

Tonight's agenda involves logging in, respeccing and setting up my new gearsets. After that, Smart Casual's going on an experimental raid in Karazhan to test out our new talents and spells.

I've altered my intended spec slightly. Given that it seems the +3% mitigation won't be added to Shield of the Templar until closer to WotLK's full release, then I'll leave it out of my spec in favor of maxing out One-Handed Weapon Specialization and Ardent Defender. All-in-all this will be Ulu's initial spec.

Talents and 3.0

Well because I happen to live in the cradle of civilisation as opposed to one of the god-forsaken colonies, I will have to wait until tomorrow evening to try out the myriad delights of Patch 3.0.2.

I suppose the only thing to do is list the probable talent spec for 3.0.

After some thought, I'm going to start with a 4/51/6 spread.

My original plan was a slightly more conventional 5/51/5 but recent news has led me to change my mind.

I switched one point from Seals of the Pure to Improved Judgement so I can better fit in the 6 and 9 second skill rotations. I also got Shield of the Templar since Ghostcrawler has said it will soon include a 3% damage reudction. Those points would have otherwise rounded out One-Handed Weapon Spec and Ardent Defender.

By level 80, I intend Ulu's tanking spec to be 5/56/10.

For Posterity.

Ulushnar's stats, unbuffed at the close of 2.4.

We'll see what the story is in 3.0 on Wednesday.

Dual Talent Specs & the cusp of 3.0

So it was Blizzcon over the weekend and they confirmed that they'd be be doing Dual Talent Specs at some point in Wrath of the Lich King:

The Dual-Talent spec feature will let you switch between your two specs without having to go back to town. You can perfectly do it between fights in a raid, however it won't be possible to switch specs in the middle of an Arena Match. Your keybinds and glyphs will be saved and automatically switched as you change your spec. An itemrack-like mod might also be added to the game to make switching even easier.

This is certainly more than I expected from the idea. I figured they'd put a massive cooldown on it, but they definately seem keen to let folks play with being hybrids. As someone who's focussing on 10-man raiding in Wrath, knowing that spare tanks/healers can switch to full DPS specs on fights where they aren't needed is massively welcome. I really cannot wait until this feature goes live.

In other news, I've slowly been vendoring/destroying unneeded junk/items in my bank in preparation for 3.0/Wrath of the Lich King. I've also altered my gear slightly, swapping Ulu's Illidari Runeshield for his Bulwark of the Amani Empire and his Wristguards of Determination for his Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx. I've also set up an altered outfit for after the patch on Wednesday which switches a few more items around. I'm actually considering using the Shard of Contempt in Ulu's tanking gear.

I really can't wait for this patch!

Update 07Oct08

Well as the witty title may give away, I'm at something of a loss about what to write. I haven't felt the need to play WoW in a while now, although I've been following the Beta changes from the sidelines. The lack of friends and the ever present latency at peak times (ie. the only times I can get on) keep me from actively participating in Beta much.

Since the reorganization of the Prot tree a few pushes ago, things have been looking relatively stable for Tankadins as we head towards the release of 3.0 (next week if the rumors are to be believed). Numbers have been tweaked, but there haven't been any massive changes.

We still don't have an 11-point talent as of this writing, and I imagine we won't see one this side of release. It's kinda sad, but I prefer it to them throwing in some half-assed placeholder to buff/nerf at a later date.

Early data by theorycrafters and raiders seems to indicate that we were sufferring in terms of health and mitigation compared to our eternal "nemeses": Warriors. This seems to have been mollified by the news that in a forthcoming Beta push, the Shield of the Templar talent will be modified to reduce incoming damage by 1/2/3%. This should bring us closer to parity with our fellow shield-bearers.

So sorry readers, nothing exciting to mention here.

Looking to the future.

Well, I've really neglected this thing, haven't I?

In truth, there isn't much to say. There's been nothing much happening in-game over the last week or two. We occasionally get a raid off the ground, but it's not the main thrust of what we're doing atm.

I'm getting bored with WoW because my time on Beta has made me realise the problems with Protection Paladins in their current state. I'm looking forward to the change in stats, I'm particularly looking forward to being able to stack Block Value without worrying about mana, and to wear tanking items without worrying about threat generation or uncrushability. Having seen what we'll become, the Protadin currently feels like a compromised beast. (I know by using the term "Protadin", I have incurred the nerdrage of a thousand Maintankadin posters. You can all kiss the fattest part of my ass!)

Which isn't to say we're perfect right now. In an article over at Tankspot, Lore's listed a few issues still prevailent in our class. For his part, Galoheart's asking "Do You Have Confidence Paladin Class Will Be Fixed?" [sic]

I have to say I do. Even if nothing changes between now and Wrath of the Lich King going live, then we'll still be in a better position than we were going into The Burning Crusade. The differences between us and certain other tanking classes are there, but they're nowhere near as pronounced as they were when the trailblazers like Lore and Invisusira were popularising the idea that we could actually tank 18 months ago.

Whilst we're at a slight disadvantage atm, which the Devs have promised will be looked at, it's a few % at best. That margin is only going to be of interest to the diehard min-maxers and Protadin (there I go again!) haters. If Wrath arrived tomorrow, there's nothing there that would stop me maintanking for Smart Casual all the way through Naxx and beyond.

I'm not worried, and I don't reccomend you should be either.

Adventures in Engineering: The Dimensional Ripper

The Dimensional Ripper - Area 52 is in many ways the pinnacle of Goblin Engineering. It's obnoxious and unreliable.

Oh it'll always get you where you're going, but there can be side effects:



First up, Ulu became a Night Elf...



I didn't like that much, so I made a beeline for the Mechanar and zoned into the instance to find something more asthetically pleasing:



After a while, I went to some other instances to help friends, and Ulu took on another shocking transformation.



However, the last and most truly terrifying transformation had yet to occur:



So remember folks, Engineering isn't all fun and games!

What I did on my weekend by Ulushnar, level 70.

Ok, so I played some of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It's fun, but the boss fights are an annoyance to someone who's used to tanking his way through fights. I'll get back to it at some point.

But if you're reading this, you're probably wanting some Wow-based information, right?

• I've pretty much given up on the Beta server. It's always a bundle of lag and ass at peak times (ie. the times I can reasonably log in). Still I have a semi-decent idea of the starting zones now, which is all I'll really need.
  
• Friday night, I finally maxed-out Ulushnar's Engineering and made his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine Control. I have a chopper now and the lore-freaks can suck it!
  
• On Saturday, I spent most of the day doing old-world content with Ulu. I went to Blackrock Depths and solo'd most of the Onyxia quest chain before patch 3.0 obliterates it. I got all the way up to the part that requires Upper Blackrock Spire.
  
• I then realised I didn't have the Upper Blackrock Spire key, so I went into Lower Blackrock Spire and had Ulushnar solo the bosses there to get it. Given it's a 55-57 level dungeon, it was something less than a problem for Ulushnar.
  
• on Sunday, I also made a Dimensional Ripper - Area 52. Ulushnar now has a Helicopter and a Teleporter.
  
• After that, I spent a fair amount of time helping various guildies kill the Brewfest boss before wrapping up the weekend with a Karazhan clear last night.
  

Speaking of the Guild, things are going ok. We currently have a 14-man membership, and I'm hoping another four people to return from Warhammer before WotLK and join in. There's been a largely positive response from most folks, with the exception of a couple of folks.

Now we just have to spend 7 weeks getting ready for the WotLK release.

The Professions aren't a-changing.

Well according to a post on MMO-Champion, the rather lacklustre Engineering Goggles have had another pass. They're now epic and roughly on a par with the drops from Naxxramas 10-man. They're also available at lvl 72 if you can get the Materials. More to the point, they have the same mote-finding ability as the current Goggles, so it looks like Mote Clouds will be implemented in WotLK.

This makes me somewhat happier about staying with Engineering, so tonight I'm going to use my stockpiled materials to get Ulu up to 375 and make his Turbo-Charged Flying Machine. Just as well really, because getting Blacksmithing to 375 looked like an annoying drag.

In guild news, our numbers seem to be slowly but steadily increasing. Of course it's too early to judge how things will pan out.

A Fresh Start.

Well, with eight weeks until Wrath of the Lich King and raid sign-ups steadily declining, I've been looking more and more to my plans for Wrath of the Lich King.

Chaotic Divinity has been my home in WoW for better or worse for three years, from fresh lvl 60 hunter to lvl 70 tankadin. However, over that time my priorities have shifted. Whilst I'm still interested in a casual approach to raiding, I find the situation as it stands in CD a little too casual. People can sign for every raid or no raids and it doesn't matter. With a membership of over 50, we were routinely struggling to get 25 off the ground. Even when we did, about half the group were generally unfamiliar with the encounter.

We needed a stricter approach to attendance and a tighter group. Sadly I couldn't do either of things whilst keeping the things in CD which were so attractive to some members.

The first ray of hope came at the start of the summer, when it was announced that the WotLK Dungeons would be switchable between 10 and 25-man mode. Suddenly it would be viable to take a tight group of 10 regular raiders all the way through the endgame.

After that, the idea sat at the back of my mind. I'd mention it in passing to folks who reacted postively enough to the idea, but i didn't have an idea about how best to proceed. I thought about setting up an unofficial "group within a group" inside CD, but that would have been unfair. I then considered turning Surprised Survivors into a raidguild. However there's a few people who either wouldn't want to join the group I was thinking of, or who I wouldn't want in that group. Even though I've been GM for most of it's life, I just didn't feel I had the right to kick people out of their home.

So the only option was to make my own Guild. I discussed the matter with a few guildies and we decided to set it up and make the announcement if and when CD finally decided to shut down raiding before Wrath of the Lich King.

As it turns out, that happened tonight. So I've now transferred Ulushnar to his new guild, the Smart Casual Raiding Company, and we've begun the process of recruiting new members.

Pre-TBC we won't get much more than a few ZA/Kara runs and maybe a few Achievement-chasing old-world raid runs after 3.0 hits. The real goal however is to hit the ground running in Wrath with a group that'll be ready to knock on the gates of Naxxramas relatively quickly.

If it all goes to crap now, I've no-one to blame but myself.

Remember, remember the 13th of November...

Well, with the 3.0 Test Realm going up on Saturday night and the rumor* that WotLK is going to be released in a little over 2 months, it looks like Blizzard is pulling all the stops to make sure that their subscribers visits to Warhammer Online will be temporary at best.

Good on them, because it's boring as hell playing on Live atm, and the EU Beta server's been a joke ever since I first logged in.

CD's lost it's raiding spirit. We can maybe scrape together enough people to take a run at the first three bosses in Mount Hyjal, but that's about it. The rest of the time people either play alts, PVP, or plain don't log in.

Warhammer's taken a few of our core players and other folks aren't stepping up to replace them. I don't see how it's worth replacing people for two months of raiding, even if we had the quality of applicants.

I think my raiding career is ending here.

*This was going to be a rant about how until we've heard from Blizzard themselves, it's a rumor, not a confirmed thing, but Blizz have just confirmed as I was typing this. Darn you Blizz, darn you to Heck!

3.0.2 Public Test Realm Open.

Well ok, it's not Beta, but if you want to see how the Paladin changes will affect you, then Patch 3.0.2 has hit the Public Test Realm.

Enjoy.

Beta: Big news.

Ok, so it looks like there was another beta patch last night, two days earlier than normal. And in it, they skinnied down the Protection tree. It's actually possible to spend 51 points in Protection and not feel gimped.

I could list all the changes, but I need another coffee before work, so I'll leave it instead to Lore over at Tankspot.com.

One change he hasn't mentioned though is that Combat Expertise now increases our crit chance by 6%. This plus the unbloating of the tree means we can pick up Heart of the Crusader and Conviction in the Retribution tree more easily. I'm going to have to explore what this means but on the face of it:

1. Having a base crit chance of around 19% will really help our single-target threat.
2. Our off-DPS in Ret gear shouldn't totally suck balls.

It's an interesting change that I'm going to experiment with.

Beta: Size Doesn't Matter..

Well at least as it applies to Mana pools for Tankadins.

I was quite shocked at the outcry from elements of the Tankadin about this weekend's changes to Tankadin itemization. I expected the people moaning about the way we've seemingly been homogenized in with Death Knights and Warriors, but I didn't realise there were so many people who liked +Intellect on their gear.

If I may speak to that section of the Tankadin community for the moment: you're all idiots operating under false assumptions. (Nice save man, you think they noticed?)

Intellect has never really helped our longevity in fights. It's been good for unloading burst threat, but that extra mana will only delay you going out of mana on content you outgear by a few seconds at best. That's why virtually no Tankadin itemization since the T6 set was finalized has included any. It was 15-20 item points out of the budget per peice and it did little good. More to the point, it was 15-20 points per peice that Warriors could have in Stamina, avoidance, threat or mitigation stats, further increasing their slight advantage in progression boss tanking.

WotLK/3.0's solution is far more elegant. It treats a Tankadin's mana pool like the Blue Rage bar we've always joked about it. A finite resource we refresh by doing the things Tanks do: taking damage, hitting stuff and avoiding damage.

Admittedly, the taking damage part of that, Spiritual Attunement is as old as The Burning Crusade/2.0.

We now regain mana by hitting stuff either by casting Judgement of Wisdom on a target, using Seal of Wisdom as our seal of choice, or hell, doing both. Admittedly we've had a version of both JoW and SoW since classic WoW, but these versions both scale, and with Hammer of the Righteous allowing you to proc seals on three targets at once, SoW is massively more effective.

Finally, the biggest and best change is the Blessing of Sanctuary change. We now have an ability that will allow us to regain mana when we successfully avoid or block an attack. This actually scales with both our Avoidance and the number of mobs we're facing.

These abilities mean one thing: Intellect on our gear is irrelevant. And I for one couldn't be happier. I know we've all hit situations where we've found ourselves gasping for mana at some key point in a farm boss fight on Live. We've all found ways around it, from "sit n' crit" to "tanking without pants". I can categorically say that this will almost certainly not happen after 3.0*.

*Unless they really screw the pooch and revert a bunch of the current changes.

Imagine a world without Crushing Blows.

Well when 3.0 comes around and Ulu's free of the yolk that is 102.4%, I'm
looking forward to grabbing some items I'd previously overlooked or benched
because of the need to keep Uncrushability.

Shattrath Protectorate Breastplate: Whilst it's only really a good threat piece on Live, in Beta it's pretty solid, due to it having more +Defense than
the Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian and also a good chunk of Hit Rating, which will be useful once we lose Precision.

Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx: At the moment, I need the Wristguards of Determination to hit uncrushability. In 3.0, I'll finally be able to look at these as a viable option, especially with the nice Expertise.

Girdle of the Fearless: Well ok, I don't have this yet, but I have the badges sitting in the bank and with the itemization changes, it's looking like a tasty option.

Bulwark of the Amani Empire: At the moment, I'm using my Illidari Runeshield for better Armor and threat. In 3.0, the only reason for me not to go back to this bad boy will be if Kaz'rogal drops his shield.

Libram of Divine Purpose: This is more about kissing goodbye to
the Libram of Repentance than it is saying hello to the Libram of DP. I don't actually use Seal of Righteousness too much on Beta atm, as I much prefer Seal of Vengeance. Might go with Libram of the Eternal Rest after all.

I honestly wasn't expecting them to reitemize our existing gear, but I'm
really glad they did. Can't wait to try all this out on a real live raid boss
after 3.0. It may be heresy to admit it, but i've always been envious of
Warriors and their ability to go after whatever gear they want without having
to appease some arcane ratio. I'm really looking forward to judging each and
every tanking drop on it's own merits rather than thinking "I can't stay
uncrushable with that" or "that's better for a Warrior".

Beta: The gears(?) they are a-changing!

Ok, I go away for the weekend and the interweb explodes. New Beta patch, and this time the biggest change for Tanks in general, and Paladin tanks in particular is that our gear has been reitemized in line with the changes to our mechanics in WotLK.

I've taken some screenshots to give examples of the itemization changes:









As you can see, the Spelldamage and Intellect is gone, replaced with Strength. Not a bad change, although Ulu's mana pool has dropped from 5.6k to 4.6k, which means his Blessing of Sanctuary and Judgement of Wisdom don't proc for nearly as much. Also, on the tier set items there appears to have been a drop in Stamina values as well. Once again, not drastic, but they seem to be more threat pieces than MT ones.

Now let's look at a couple of generic badge items:




Once again, the strength's been added, but this time, it's at the cost of defense, dodge and expertise. A little more annoying, but the points have to come from somewhere.

Overall, this puts some changes to Ulu's stats:



He now has 1.1k Attack Power, which is nearly three times what he has in live. On top of that, he still has around 400 spellpower thanks to Touched by the Light. He also now blocks for 601, which means I can't wait to get my hands on Shield of Righteousness at level 75.

State of the Protection Tree - The Rambling

Ok, to quickly answer Ghostcrawler's question I'm going to list talents that I consider to be "fun", "not fun", "essential", "not essential". This is from the perspective of someone who MTs 25-mans now and will continue to do so hopefully between 3.0 and Wrath's release.

Fun, Essential

Holy Shield
Anticipation
One Handed Specialization
Blessing of Sanctuary
Hammer of the Righteous
Avenger's Shield
Combat Expertise
Divine Strength
Judgements of the Just (aka, Thunderjudge!)

Fun, Not Essential

Touched by the Light
Improved Holy Shield
Reckoning
Improved Devotion Aura
Blessing of Kings
Redoubt
Shield of the Templar

Not Fun, Essential

Sacred Duty
Toughness
Improved Righteous Fury
Ardent Defender

Not Fun, Not Essential

Shield Specialization
Stoicism
Guardian's Favor
Divine Guardian
Improved Hammer of Justice
Guarded by the Light
Spell Warding


All in all, not a bad ratio, 16 "fun" talents vs 11 "not-fun" ones and more than twice the number of "fun, essential" talents than "not fun, essential" ones. Now some qualifications, be warned folks, this will be a long one.

Two Blessings: Protection is the only tree with talented Blessings and we've got two of the feckers, both of which, thanks to the awesome new Blessing of Sanctuary changes darn-near essential.

Blessing of Kings is one of the best buffs in the game for raiding. A flat 10% boost to all stats that stacks with every other buff in the game. It's also the only buff of it's type in the game.

Blessing of Sanctuary on the other hand is basically the tanking buff that every tank's wanted ever since the first T2-geared Warrior tried to help their mates through Scholo. The 3% mitigation and ability to regain tanking resources on a successful block/parry/dodge is going to be an incredibly desirable ability for almost every fight.

The added wrinkle to this (and I know I'm stepping outside Ghostwalker's brief as I mention this) is that Holydins are less likely to get Kings in the expansion. Most Holydins I speak to are aiming to go 15 points into Retribution for Conviction at least, which will make it unlikely they'll also be willing to go 11 points into Protection.

Therefore, Kings will be only available to Protection Paladins and possibly the occasional Retribution Paladin who specced deeper into Prot for off-tanking. In practical terms, tanks will have to choose between Sanctuary and Kings for most fights. That's one spec with two powerful buffs, only one of which it can do at a time.

My preferred solution would be to make Kings baseline. Or failing that, move it to the Holy Tree, possibly in the place of Aura Mastery (which seems out of place with the new fray-adjacent Holydins). Other people have suggested making Sanctuary a self-buff (or folding it into Improved Righteous Fury), but it's too nice for other tanks imo.

Redoubt/Shield Spec: Redoubt's always been a weird talent. It's reasonably useful in massive AoE situations, and the odd time it allows you to stay uncrushable in between Holy Shield refreshes. That said, if you ask most Tankadins why they take it and the answer's usually "because it's tied to Shield Spec".

Shield Spec itself has taken a hit thusfar. The fact it only works on +block value from items is ignoring the massive swing towards BV from Strength in WotLK itemization. I can imagine that Blizz may be worried about double BV scaling from both Divine Strength and Shield spec, but unless there's a massive amount of +BV itemization in the Wrath endgame, I can't see this talent pulling the weight of the 8 points you need to spend to get it.

The Upper Tiers: Well this is a mixed bag isn't it? On the one hand you have the lovely threat/hybrid talent that is Touched by the Light and "it took you this long to give us it?" awesomeness of Judgements of the Just. All this is capped with the itemization-redefining glee of Hammer of the Righteous.

And then we have two talents that reduce the mana cost of some of our powers... Two. Seperate. Talents.

Ok, so originally Guarded by the Light was the kind of buff that Blessing of Sanctuary eventually became, a talent designed to help us out in overgearing situations without depantsification. And I'll admit that Shield of the Templar also boosts the damage of our shield spells, so it's not as terrible as it first appears.

That said, Guarded by the Light's still underwhelming for a talent this deep in the tree. What I'd like to see, and I'm hopefully not alone in this, is a talent that reduces the duration of silence effects. Currently silences are the major weakness we have compared to other tanks, and it would be nice to see this mitigated.

Well ok, that's my rambling over. If any nice Colonials with access to the Beta forums over there feel like cross-posting this to there, I'll be grateful for like 2, maybe 3 minutes.

State of the Protection Tree: Intro-thingy.

Ok, so there's a topic right now on the US beta forums asking about the current state of the Protection tree:

We are about ready to do our next major pass on the Paladin trees.

We think Prot does have too many mandatory talents, and too many talents that offer passive mitigation without other interesting mechanics or even dps. This thread is a great opportunity to discuss the tree and offer your feedback.

For purposes of this thread, the kinds of feedback that are useful:
-- Which talents are fun vs. which ones aren't
-- Areas in the tree that tie up too many talent points vs. areas that feel barren
-- Talents that feel mandatory vs. talents that feel fun but optional vs. talents you'd never get

For purposes of this thread, we are less interested in:
-- Mitigation and threat capabilities of the paladin vs. other tanks (we'll get to that)
-- Holy and Retribution (we'll get to that)
-- Mana, dps, interrupts or other paladin issues (we'll get to that)
-- Whether it's a good goal for Prot to be viable at healing, dps or PvP. (It's helpful to mention when talents might fit these roles, but let's not use this particular thread for a debate on whether Prot should be at all decent in PvP.)
-- Questions about other topics, pleas to visit other forums or catty arguments

Rest assured this is not our only avenue for collecting feedback. We do talk to experienced and beginner tanks alike as well as drawing on our own internal resources to make decisions.

Ready, Set, Go!

Not having a US Beta account, I'm going to post my thoughts on it here later.

Initial concerns include:

*Two vital blessings in the same tree.
*Redoubt/Shield Specialization crapness.
*the "meh-ness" of the higher-tier talents.

Meanwhile on Live...

We downed Azgalor last night for the first time! Sadly the Paladin t6 token didn't drop, which is fair enough, it gives me more time to store up the bajillion dkp I'll need to get them.

Beta: New Quest Toys

As i mentioned earlier, I picked up quests for two nice blue tanking items this morning.

First up some gloves, which I rate as better than Ulu's T5:


Then some Shoulders, which are slightly worse than his T5 ones, but that I'll grab and bank for when I start to get more +Str gear:


And finally, how the two items look on Ulu:



Hopefully they'll change the look of the shoulders on live. Now all I need to do is grab a PuG to The Nexus some time.

Beta: More on the grind.

Ok, so the last post was me hastily jotting down thoughts whilst finishing my coffee and heading out the door to work.

Last night, Ulu ran around the Howling Fyjord for a while, doing some of the early quests there. It's a pretty huge zone, but the infrastructure between quest hubs feels a little awkward right now. There's a plane you can take from the docks/first quest hub to a second hub, but there's no way for you to return to the first hub easily from there. Thank Blizz for Divine Shield-assisted base-jumping is all I can say!

This morning Ulu left the Howling Fyjord to go back and finish the last few quests in the Borean Tundra, and more specifically, the Coldarra subzone. As I mentioned in passing in the last post, there appears to be an annoying bug present that stops people regenerating mana and health normally. I'm not sure where it comes from because it certainly wasn't present last night.

The new Blessing of Sanctuary and Judgement of Wisdom definately make life easier for soloing, but it all depends on the number of mobs you're fighting. Against one solo mob, it's decidedly inefficent, since you don't dodge, block or parry enough to get a decent mana income relative to your costs. That said, at three or more mobs, I find myself switching to Judgement of Light since I'm getting more than enough mana back.

Casters are still annoying however, but I'm willing to accept that as our Achilles Heel.

There also seems to be new quest rewards added in. Whilst questing in Coldarra, I picked up two quests for The Nexus that included blue-quality tanking options. They don't appear to be on Wowhead, so I'll take screenshots tonight.

It's nice to be level 72, but looking at the new powers available (a new rank of Divine Wrath and Redemption) I won't be making a beeline for the Paladin trainer tonight.

Beta: Three things...

1. Ulu dinged level 72 this morning.
2. There's an annoying bug that's preventing Mana and Health Regenerating via Resting or Eating/Drinking.
3. Don't try and AoE multiple Blue Drakonid Supplicants. The results are embarrassing:

Beta: On Intellect

Galoheart wrote:

Oh yes indeed. Having more Intellect does scale the effect of the procs from Blessing of Sanctuary. Especially given our small mana pool. So stacking it when possible seems at this point a good thing as it adds much to out mana.

I don't think so, really. Whilst we're the only Tanking class who can increase the size of our resource pool via an attribute, I'm not sure if it's worth doing it in anything other than situations that we overgear.

When you're tanking progression content, then you should get a decent-enough mana return from healing, with maybe a JoW/BoS thrown in for good measure.

If we take +intellect items or enchants, it will always be at the detriment to our other stats.

If you had a choice of two items, one with:

+30 Strength
+60 Stamina
+20 Defense Rating

and the other with:

+25 Strength
+51 Stamina
+18 Defense Rating
+20 Intellect

Which one is actually going to make us a better tank? The +Int item will definately help our Soloing, Off-Tanking, and any visits to farm content. That said, the difference in mana return is minimal (the 20 intellect gives +6 mana back per BoS/JoW proc), it'll cost us a fair amount in other stats, which I'm not convinced we can afford to do on progression content. And no other Tanking class will make that sacrifice.

Beta: The Mana Will Roll right In

New Beta build on Friday/Saturday. I started downloading the sucker on Saturday morning before I left for a weekend visiting my friends, so I didn't get to install it until Sunday evening on my return.

There were two major changes for Protadins:

1. Judgements actually work again. They have however removed the Attack Power/Spellpower scaling from the Mana/Health return. Judgement of Wisdom now restores a flat 2% of your maximum mana. In Ulu's T5/Badge gear with 5.6k mana unbuffed, this equated to 112-113 mana per swing. I haven't tested Judgement of Light yet, so I'm unsure how much that scales.

2. Blessing of Sanctuary has had a massive overhaul. The current version is a rather unimpressive flat damage reduction and a small threat boost on block.

"Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken form all sources by 3% for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana."

Protection Paladins now have the perfect blessing for Soloing and overgeared content. Yes, I know Blessing of Might scales our damage, but my concern with soloing has always been downtime. I don't mind spending 20 seconds longer killing a group if I can then go straight onto the next group without spending 30 secs eating/drinking. Or worse, having to auto-attack the last 20-30% of a mob because I'm out of mana.

Before work this morning, I left my Blacksmithing levelling and went to the Howling Fyjord to give the new abilities a test. The gate to Valgarde is constantly swarmed with level 67 Vykrul and Worgs, which seemed to be a decent spot to test Ulu's new abilities.



This is him at about a dozen mobs in. Whilst I was moving around and positioning them, the odd attack did get through, and the Worgs have an annoying disease DoT, so Ulu's taken some damage. However, look at the stream of mana gains and more importantly, look at his mana bar at this point:



I think I could get to like this, although if this hits live, I think my pace in instances will cause even more grey hairs on my healer's heads. Of course, I'm going to have to see how this scales with less +Int gear at level 80.