Hiatus of a sort.

I haven't posted on this blog for a bit, and I don't know if I will much in the future. Simply put, Ulu hasn't raided since September and he probably won't be raiding again in the future. I've set up a new blog to follow Graysun's exploits as I master the fine art of DK DPS. If you're interested, it can be found here:

Shadows & Dust

Thanks to everyone who has read or commented on this thing over the last three years!

Sick of 'See You In The Cataclysm'

In many ways, I curse Blizzard for ever announcing the forthcoming Cataclysm expansion before Icecrown even hit the PTR. In many ways it gave people the perfect "jumping off" point. The figure raiding doesn't matter when they can see the reset button coming in less than a year.

Anyway, Smart Casual's been hit by a rash of them recently. Lots of folks getting tired and wanting to leave for a while, each saying they'll be back when the expansion comes round. In all case, I'm left in two minds. On one hand, they're friends, people I would happily choose to play with. On the other, in order to keep raiding in the here and now, I'm forced to replace them, and whilst I may not always be crazy about the folks who do replace them, it's not like I'll be able to turn around to them in six months and say "sorry, but it's time to make way for the guy you replaced."

If you're gonna quit, quit, but don't say "see ya in the next expansion" like I'm supposed to hold a door open for you.

There's "Retirement" and there's "Retirement".

I'm on a break from Ulu. I log him in once a day to do Jewelcrafting quests and to use his Titansteel cooldown. Once a week, I'll go do Wintergrasp with him to get honor which I can then turn into epic gems. I'm not exactly bored with him, but I'm kinda tired of tanking, having done it for two and a half years now, and whilst it's pretty functional, I find Ret to be fairly unfulfilling as a DPS spec.

I've taken time off from raiding to work on Graysun, my Death Knight. When last we left him, he was an alt tank for Naxx runs and the occasional heroic a guildie wanted to go to after Ulu got saved. Both his specs were Unholy, using a 2-hander and he just felt like Ulu but less in most respects.

That said, I was looking for a DPSer to have fun with, and it was either work on Graysun, or level Wulfsblood. I tried the latter for a couple of days, but I just found it too annoying. Pet management's become too much of a chore in WotLK, and going through the WotLK content for the third time didn't appeal. Besides, Gray was semi-geared, and had a tanking spec to boot, so finding PuGs would be easier.

To get him out of the "he's just like Ulu" funk, I decided to try a 0/53/18 Frost Dual Wield spec. I figured since Smart Casual didn't have any fulltime Rogues, Enhancement Shamans or DW Death Knights, someone should be around to pick up all the one-handers that dropped. And that someone might as well be Gray.

I spent the last fortnight running every heroic and Trial of the Champion I could with him in order to get his gear to a level I'd consider "acceptable". Last night I took him into Ulduar 10, and his DPS aquitted itself nicely against the other, better geared members of the guild, which was good to see. After this week, I'll be in Australia for three weeks, but hopefully after that, I'll be able to use Gray as my main raiding toon.

PuG Justice

Oh hai!

Haven't updated this thing in a while. I've been on a break from raiding since the summer well and truly burned me out. On top of that, playing a Paladin constantly for the last couple of years was starting to bore me, so I decided to focus on my Death Knight, Graysun for a bit.

More on that in another post (maybe). In the process of gearing up Gray, I've been getting my ass in every heroic PuG I can get. Some have been awesome, some have been painful, but none annoyed me as much as one I went on on Saturday night.

It was to Nexus. The group was a Feral Druid tank, a Boomkin, a Shadow Priest, Gray and a Shaman Healer. I figured it would be an easy five badges and best of all, Gray wouldn't have to tank. We kill one mob, and the Shaman leaves the party. No words, just leaves the party and hearths out. That's pretty much the end of that PuG.

The next day, one of our priests asks for a Tank to do the daily heroic. Gray's already saved, so I pull Ulu out of mothballs and everybody's chuffed to see a Tank with 34k health join the party. Then I notice the healer is the same Shaman as bailed on the group last night. I have a quick chat in guild with my Priest buddy and explain the situation. I then confront the Shaman about the pug they bailed on without a word. They're relatively unrepentant, said they had to eat and didn't have time to explain (bullshit, if you've got time to hearth, you've got time to say "sorry, I've got to go now".) I say I don't want to group with them, and we proceed to punt them from the group. Priest buddy offers to heal, but we manage to get another healer from /LFG, so no need and the rest of the run goes without a hitch, despite the Shaman whispering me every couple of minutes with apologies and asking to be allowed back into the group.

Ultimately, the ability to deliver pug justice was worth the run in and of itself. If you have to bail on a group, have the decency to explain yourself. I am a vindictive bastard and I will punish you if I can.

Block Rating, more like Suck Rating!

If there's one question doing the rounds at Maintankadin at the moment that makes me especially sad it's the perennial "Is my Block % too low?"

The answer is simply this: no, never.

I can't blame the players. A disproportionately high amount of Naxx and even Ulduar gear has this crap stat on it, especially our Tier 7 and Tier 8 sets. If you started tanking to get your guild through Ulduar in a set made from Naxx25 cast-offs, then you'd end up thinking it's a useful stat, especially when you see that several of your prot talents play off blocks.

Block Rating has, (or rather, had) a place. For Heroics and Tier 7 content, getting your Block, Parry, Dodge and miss chance to add up to 102.4% guarantees you significant damage mitigation. But really, if you're going to MT anything past Naxx, then drop the block first chance you get. Even with the increase to Block Value on items in 3.2, it's still better to avoid one hit than block two-three.

With Ulu currently, I have replaced every piece of Block Rating gear on him, except his T8 shoulders and helm, and the first chance I get, they'll be gone as well. Getting high avoidance and enough health to survive reasonable damage are always my priorities. Block Rating is something I'll take if I really have no better option.

I've handed in my notice

Greetings gentle readers, sorry for not updating recently. The summer and the normal soul-crushing grind of trying to get people willing to raid have kinda sapped my enthusiasm. Again.

Patch 3.2: The Stopgap Whilst We Work On Icecrown has been released. Demand for heroics has increased about 400% and Ulu's tanking her pretty little ass off most nights. I've also finally got over my cockblock on the Argent Tournament quests and I've been doing those daily when I can.

But all in all, I need a break from the game. Leading the guild, whilst rewarding has also been emotionally and intellectually taxing. Added to that, the care and attention in this tier of content has left me cold.

Ultimately, I've informed my guild that I'll be cancelling my subscription in September, and I've started trying to help them take steps to ensure they can continue raiding after that time.

I Hate Summer

I have massive hay fever and a propensity for wearing black, so I'm naturally ill-disposed to the few weeks of the year where the sun dares to shine on the Northern Hemisphere. In recent years, my annoyance has been compounded by the fact that it also means that people I can otherwise rely upon would rather be outside than playing.

Now before you call me a total no-life jerk, I'm not suggesting they stay shackled to their desks when the sun's blazing, but it baffles me that they're mostly unwilling to spend 3 hour a night 2-3 times a week indoors.

I'd hoped that this year, with the guild in place the situation would be mitigated, but it appears my hopes were in vain. Sign-ups are in the toilet and conservative recruitment during the busy times has lead to a deficit of raiders. We've had cancelled raids several times in the last few weeks and this is a pattern I can see continuing.

Ultimately, i don't see a way out of it. I dislike resenting people for enjoying the summer, but damn it, if you can't be where you said you'd be then why did you say it in the first place?

All in all, I've pretty much had enough of it.

Are we "done"?

So I looked at yesterday's official Paladin Q&A and I was struck by one thing: there was barely any mention of Tanking.

There was a lot about Retribution and Holy in PVP and PVE, but there was barely anything about Protection. This annoyed me a wee bit until I had a think, and I asked myself "well what needs to be done to us?"

I'll admit I could think of some nitpicks (another low-cooldown interrupt would be nice, some kind of gap-closer as well) but ultimately I think Paladin Tanks are in a good place when compared to other tanks. 3.2 gives us another "cooldown" in the reworked Ardent Defender, Blessing of Sanctuary gives Stamina so I never need to choose between it and Kings, and there's a Demoralizing Shout effect in easy reach with the reworked Vindication. Our cup runneth over.

It's a weird feeling to have nothing really to moan about. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Faction-Switching coming soon!

Well on the back of Ulu's adventures in Character Re-Customization, I awoke and read this Blue post this morning:

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

Up until now you've only been able to change non-gameplay-affecting elements of your character. You can change your character's hair style and coloring in-game, or change elements like your gender, name and even server via account management for a modest fee.

The prospect of changing your faction throws up all sorts of interesting questions. Will your race change as well? (If so, will this lead to people being able to alter their race whilst remaining in the same faction?) Will the option be limited based on the current faction balance of the server you're on? How does this affect people on a PVP server where you're limited to toons of one faction or another?

It's a weird one all right...

Smart Casual Recruiting

I don't normally like doing this, but I figure I'll throw this out there and see if it attracts anyone:

Well Summer's upon us, and like a lot of guilds, we're sufferring from people losing interest or going on holiday. Since we're currently working on Yogg-Saron in 10-man, we need bodies to keep up momentum.

1 Tank (We currently have a Warrior, Paladin and DK MT team and a Boomkin who offspecs Feral, so we'll consider most decent tanks).
1-2 Melee DPS with short-CD interrupts (Yep, we're thinking about General here.)
1 Holy Priest (Our healing team's relatively well-stocked, but it lacks a full-time dress-wearer)

We may also consider 1-2 ranged dps with good gear.

What we expect:

*Gear ready to start Ulduar 10. You should ideally be in at least full Naxx10/Heroics gear as a minimum. DPS should be hit-capped, Tanks should be uncrittable with about 28k health minimum. All gear should be enchanted and gemmed to a decent standard. Decent offspec gear is a bonus.

*A decent standard of written English. We understand that for a lot of people in the EU, English isn't your first language, but that's no excuse to use txt/l337 speak!

*Attendance: We run three progression raids per week from 19:30 to 22:30 server time, invites go out at 19:15. You should ideally be signing for at least two of those raids.

*Guild Membership: We ask that any raiding toons you have join the guild. You're welcome to keep any alts in whichever guild you want.

What we offer:

A fun, friendly atmosphere to raid ten-man content. I know the requirements above sound strict, but to keep the group effective with our casual hours, we need everyone giving 110%.

If you're interested in applying, please head over here and read the "Read this first" thread.

I Feel Pretty

The time came for a change...

Before:



After:

Patch 3.2: Enter the Casual Colloseum.

MMO champion has the full 3.2 patch notes here. There's some sexytime changes for Paladin Tanks, but I'll go over them in another post, there's something I wanna talk about first:

# Emblem System Changes

* Both the 10 and 25 player instances of the Crusaders' Coliseum drop a new Emblem of Triumph.
* Any dungeons that previously dropped Emblems of Heroism or Valor, such as Naxxramas or Heroic Halls of Stone, will now drop Emblems of Conquest instead. Emblems of Conquest can still be converted to Valor or Heroism.
* The heroic dungeon daily quest will now reward 2 Emblems of Triumph and the normal daily dungeon quest will reward 1 Emblem of Triumph.
* The existing achievements to collect 1, 25, 50, etc. Emblems of Heroism, Valor, and Conquest have been converted to Feats of Strength since Heroism and Valor Emblems are no longer attainable.
* New achievements have been added to collect various amounts of any combination of emblems.

I'm deeply conflicted about the change. As a GM, I'm glad that raid-level gear will be easier to get for new members or alts. As someone who raids 2-4 nights a week, I'm glad I can do something meaningful to improve my character on my nights off, and as a raider, I'll be happy to never see the inside of Naxxramas again!

On the other hand though, I hope they don't take the change too far. I kind of liked the fact that you weren't able to get cutting edge gear out of casual content like you could in The Burning Crusade.

Eh, i'll have to see how this change unfolds before I make judgement.

Summertime: The Coming of the Alts

What's there to say on this thing?

Ulduar's going... ok. We've managed to clear to Yogg-Saron fairly seamlessly and we've also got phase 1 of the fight underway, but it still feels like a long while until we'll be killing him. Summertime's started to interfere with our plans though, and it's something I'll be keeping my eye on in the weeks to come.

Now that Ulu's pretty much got everything he needs from PVP grinding, I need a project in-game. To that end, I've created Walstafa, a Human Rogue to keep me amused in between raids. I've really been bitten by the Melee bug, and Rogues are one class that never fails to annoy me in PVP, so I'd like to understand them better.

I'm enjoying him thusfar, but I'd forgotten how annoying Elwynn Forest and Westfall were to level in. I should really drag Ulu around some PuG heroics to get enough emblems for the nice heirloom items.

The Grind Is Over... The Fun Begins!

Quick Warning: This post is mostly* about PVP again.

Well last night Ulushnar and Ebil knuckled down to do some serious Arena grinding. Figuring we weren't going to get better at playing together unless we practised, we used an evening off raiding to play 93 games over about four hours. That's more games than Ulu has played all season.

A two-DPS team in 2V2 can have a fairly "challenging" time, especially when you break the 1000 rating barrier. We lost the occasional match through mistakes (my years as a Paladin tank haven't taught me much respect for sheeps), and occasionally through being plain outclassed (a full Furious 2k+ rated DPSer helping out his healer mate).

That said, we ended up winning more than we lost, and finally inched our Team & Personal ratings over the all-important 1250 needed to get Ulu's Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude. That was originally my reason for starting Arenas with Ulushnar, since it's pretty much Best-In-Slot for Retribution. that said, I've really enjoyed the games and I fully intend continuing the 2v2 for as long as Ebil can stomach it.

*Ok, so I lied about the "mostly" part

Bye, Bye Vindication!

Well last night Ulu and his Mage cohort, Ebil played some Arenas, about 29 all things told, with our normal 40% win rate. Still, we're having fun and slowly getting to useful ratings (over 1k team rating thanks to the assistance of my higher-rated Ret Buddy, just under 1k personal rating).

Ironsoul really helps Ulu's burst damage and I think I've found a good mix of Resilience and DPS gear so that I can survive a decent amount of focussed fire and put out a solid amount of hurt.


And then this morning, I woke up to find they were nerfing Vindication:

We are in the process of completing a hotfix that could go live as early as this afternoon that will make the Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduce Intelligence or Stamina from the target it is applied to. The talent will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength as it currently does. We felt this change will help balance the ability out, especially in the lower arena brackets where they are very prominent, while not being a negative impact on a Retribution Paladin’s PvE dps.

Once this hotfix is live, the tooltip will be incorrect until we can update it in the next content patch.

Why with Ret is it always a hotfix for any other class it's ok to let them dominate an entire arena season?
Increasingly it felt like someone playing against a Ret-Pally really only had 60% of their health bar because Vindication took away 20% from the start and then Hammer of Wrath kicked in when they had 20% left. This change was something we could confidently hotfix and would have a minimal to no impact on the PvE side of things.

Thanks Blizz, along with Eye for an Eye, that's 5 points I can move from PVP talents into PVE ones. *sigh*

Now I appreciate their logic, I can even appreciate why they felt it was "safe" to hotfix now, since it will have a negligable impact on Ret PVE performance, but this is the latest in a long line of nerfs of Retribution Paladins since 3.1. Exorcism, Eye For An Eye, Hand of Freedom and now Vindication and Hammer of Justice (yep, the interrupt part won't work on players who acquire stun immunity via Diminishing Returns).

Now, We've got the carrot of promised changes to the Paladin combat system in "the next content patch" (I'm willing to bet that gets shifted to 3.3 rather than 3.2), but right now the constant niggling nerfing of us feels like a death by a thousand cuts. Of course the Schadenfreude of members of other, as-yet-unnerfed classes doesn't help (I'm looking at you Rogues, Discipline Priests and Resto Druids).

Our burst damage is ok, but nothing to write home about (I'll never call out the silly 9k crits of my Mage partner). We have two stuns, one on a talented 40 sec CD and one on a 6 sec CD. Ok we can use Seal of Justice, but that just seems to be a fast ticket to diminishing returns.

More and more in arenas I feel like I'm just there to keep my Mage partner alive whilst he does the killing. If that's the case, I might as well go Holy.

Still alive!

Oh hai, haven't updated this for a bit! Here's a brief summary of what's been going on in Spacegoatland:

*The week after the Mimiron kill we managed our first General Vezax kill and got a look at the Yogg-Saron fight. Didn't get through Phase One due to people not dodging clouds correctly.

*The week after that, Ulu's Ret set got a boost in the form of Ironsoul. Mimiron proceeded to be an asshole and it took about 5-6 hours spread over three raids to finally down him. No General kill this week. Still, he gave Ulu a nifty hat, which also gave him a 2-piece bonus.

*After the adjustments in 3.1.3 this week, Mimiron went down first try last night. Presently only Freya stands between us and the General. Hopefully we'll get some decent attempts on Yogg again this week!

A Kick in the Jewels...

First up, they announced at the weekend that they'd be nerfing Jewelcrafting:

In the next major content patch we will be removing the prismatic quality of the jewelcrafter-only Dragon’s Eye gems. Like other gems, they will have to match the socket color to receive a socket bonus. When this change occurs, players with qualifying jewelcrafting skill will be provided a yet to be determined amount of Dalaran Jewelecrafter Tokens as compensation.

[...] Nerfs are rarely (if ever) something that returns positive feedback, but we feel this change is necessary to bring this profession more in-line with the bonuses from the other professions. The stat bonuses are meant to stand on their own, not provide extra socket bonuses or ignore meta-gem requirements.

It now goes from being an overpowered profession to a merely useful one. A nice offset to this change would be the introduction of mixed-color Dragon's Eyes (ie: green, purple and orange), but I'm not about to hold my breath over that one!

In response to Galo's remarks on my last post:

Could be a idea maybe Macroing it to target target cast and putting a line of text in the macro that yells out that said spell is casted on tank so the raid is aware for obvious reasons of the spell. That may be a idea.

I know I redid most of my macro's for Divine Protection, DS/DS I have a line of text in the macro that yells out it's casted so the raid and especially the healer is aware spell is casted in case tank really needs extra attention. May have to do that with LoH as well.

I already have a line my Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice macro warning my healers in /rw that I'm using DS so they can adjust healing appropriately. I've also macro'd Hand of Salvation with a /rw warning to the DPS, although I usualyl find I have an exceptionally healthy threat lead early in the fight.

I don't bother with Target's Target on my HoS macro, but that might be an idea to get double use out of it...

In other news, I stepped into Arenas again on Friday with the Frost Mage who also hangs out in my 2v2 team. We spent the first six games getting our asses handed to us before we clawed back wins in the last three. It's inspired me to make some changes to my Retribution Spec to make it more PVP friendly (there's no point in having a raid-optimized Ret spec when I PVP in maybe one fight a week.) In the end, I went for this: 0/20/51

What I lost:

Improved Blessing of Might: It's nice, but not mandatory for Arenas
Swift Retribution: The haste is good for sustained DPS, but not big for burst
Righteous Vengeance: Great for sustained DPS, but again, not a big burst talent.
Divinty: 5% extra heals is covered by one of my other choices below.
Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian: I'll miss my 1-minute Sacred Shields, but I wanted to try some other toys.
1/3 Two-Handed Weapon Spec: I needed to trim points somewhere, and Crusade gives better bang for the buck.

What I gained:

Vindication: I figured I'd experiment with this talent. Debuffing someone's Stamina can mean them dying more quickly.
Eye For An Eye: A quintessential PVP talent, and it should be nice vs the low-end folks in high-crit PVE gear.
Divine Purpose: Turns Hand of Freedom into a "mini-PVP Trinket" on a short cooldown.
Stocism: Less Stun time makes me a happy fellow.
Guardian's Favor: Boosts Hand of Protection and Hand of Freedom, your go-to buttons in Arena.
Improved Hammer of Justice: More Stuns = More Happy Times!
Improved Righteous Fury: An extra 6% damage reduction's pretty much a no-brainer.
Improved Devotion Aura: This is the only talent I'm not 100% sure of. The healing boost makes up for the lack of Divinity, and the extra mitigation might help when we're against a tough physical DPS team. It also means if Ulu does go ret for a boss fight whilst raiding, he can still give the healing bonus.

Gearing towards the future.

Well, as of last night's activity (a guild run to VoA10 and an OS25 semi-pug) Ulu sits about four Emblem of Valor away from his final tanking purchase: Kyzoc's Ground Stompers. I'll get those tonight in Ulduar, and after that, I'm planning to get some more Retribution toys. First up will be the Libram of Radiance. I've pretty much given up on getting the Deadly Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude due to scheduling issues with my 2v2 arena partner.

Been playing around a bit with Chardev to see how Ulu would sit once he has all the tanking drops he wants from Ulduar 10 normal mode. This seems to be the ideal setup, but wether or not he'll get there any time soon is another matter. (Thusfar in Ulduar, after five weeks of clearing bosses we've had precisely one Conqueror tier token drop!) I wish Blizz would let you buy the 10-man T8 with Emblems of Valor, it'd take some of the pain out of the RNG, and equipping around 17 people on five tier tokens a week!

I'm also considering replacing Ulu's Glyph of Exorcism with a Glyph of Salvation to give Ulu another minor "oh crap" button for Ulduar. To be honest, threat hasn't been an issue to date, and working Exorcism into my normal tanking rotation has been more effort than the reward merited.

Mimiron down!

So last night, on our fourth night of training, we downed Mimiron.



I think it ranks as the most complicated normal-mode fight in Ulduar 10, and it's going to take a long time for us to get it completely under control. That said, the presence of both a Restoration Shaman and a Holy Priest on healing made life much easier given the large amount of raid/aoe damage doing the rounds.

We finished the night with a couple of goes on General Vezax. He looks relatively straightforward once you learn the gimmicks, so I reckon we'll end up killing him this week.

I'm really pleased with Ulduar thusfar. Progress has been steady without being frustrating. I can't wait to down Yogg-Saron so we can start work on the Hard Mode encounters.

People Who Aren't You Have Won The Game!

Sorry folks, been only holiday last week celebrating my 32nd Birthday. Back in the saddle now with some venom

So last night, I took part in a joint Naxx-25 run with a friendly guild (Smart Casual members ended up hoovering most of the loot, including two pieces of Tier 7.5 for yours truly.)

As we were finishing up, our new Hunter mentions in /guild his dissapointment that Ensidia (the guild formerly known as Nihilum/Curse) downed the 10-man version of Alganon The Observer this week, five weeks after Ulduar's launch on the live server.

In response, I've been quick to point the following out:

1. They're pro gamers. Beating content quickly is what they do.
2. They were taking on a boss that was designed for people who have cleared Ulduar 10 including some hard modes.
3. They've been clearing Ulduar 10 and 25-man since launch, including hard modes in both. They're geared beyond the stress level for the encounter.
4. They're not us.

And that last point is the thing that bugs me the most. People have been jumping up and down about Ulduar's difficulty not being all that high. Moaning about how groups like Ensidia et al cleared it in their first week. And most of the people who were moaning weren't actually in the guilds doing the clearing!

From the point of view of someone who was actually wearing 10-man gear for that first week, it certainly didn't feel easy. A lot of the bosses came down to the knife's edge and some unlikely raid compositions (a shadow priest switching to holy to give us four healers on Ignis for example). By the second and third weeks, they'd actually managed to tune it down a bit to the level it was supposed to be: challenging for a group in Naxx10 gear.

Ultimately I don't care who's beaten the content before me, I just care about when I get my turn! I'm on a backwater RP-PVE server and so far from the cutting edge it isn't funny. The upside is I can relax, let someone else worry about world firsts and just concentrate on having fun. That's why we play this game, right?