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.

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.

I Feel Pretty

The time came for a change...

Before:



After:

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.

30k Health woo-hoo!

Ulushnar hit 30k unbuffed health last night.

OK, so I'll admit I hate tanks who go on about their hit points like it's the only thing that matters. Still, it's nice to get there under my own standards.

* I only have one Stamina trinket equipped.
* With the exception of his Tier 7.5 gloves and Naxx25 ring, all his gear is from 10-mans.
* He has the minimum Defense needed to be uncrittable to raid bosses.
* He's block capped with raid buffs.
* His avoidance doesn't totally suck ass (just under 52% unbuffed).
* He doesn't have any Tier 8 yet, and maintains his T7 4-piece bonus.
* All enchants/gems are best-in-slot. No +sta armor kits on the gloves.

Utterly crushed six bosses in Ulduar 10 last night. Left a few farm bosses for the follow-up raids and a bunch of training time on Freya and Mimiron, our current targets.

Prot... PVP?

So last night, I started doing 2v2 Arena with a Ret Paladin friend of mine. I'll never be a hardcore PVPer, but the Hateful Gladiator's Libram of Fortitude is the best Ret Libram Ulu will see this side of spending Emblems of Valor, so it's worth a few weeks of humiliation.

So we started, and as two melee DPS without any sort of healer-killers, we got our asses handed to us. After a few games, I had an idea. I switched Ulu back to Protection Spec, equipped my Block Value gear and swapped in my PVP trinket. The upshot was, we started surviving. I could do some burst, but most importantly, I could survive any meleer who decided to unload on me whilst throwing cleanses and heals to my Ret buddy.

We still lost a few games, but we also pulled some wins out of our hats as a result of the switch. I'm going to have to try a few more next week, but I found Arenas as Prot surprisingly fun. In DPS vs Healer games, the DPSer usually spent too long trying to kill me whilst my buddy killed the healer. In two DPS games, we could outlast some of our competition. Our tactics are kinda rough, but I've been thinking about doing more with it.

It's even had me considering switching my Ret spec for a PVP-oriented Prot Spec, but I think the versatility of being able to switch from Tank to Healer is too nice for raiding right now.

3.1.1 and Other quick updates

So we had a mini-patch on Wednesday, dropping some nerfs to the Ulduar bosses and a PVP nerf to Paladins (Exorcism can no longer target other players). I get why they did it, but losing one of Ret's few ranged PVP moves kinda sucks. They're promising to reverse it when they have a chance to make Ret DPS more "interesting". Given they've be wrestling that one since Classic, I'm not holding my breath.

I am looking forward to the nerfed Ulduar bosses though. It's not that I don't like a challenge, it's just that I think the 10-man was tested by people in 25-man gear for the most part (given how easy Naxx25 was to pug). It was definately doable, but the margin for error felt a little tight. I'm hoping the balance is now a little more towards the "fun" side of the spectrum.

Ah well, we're back in tonight, let's see how it goes.

3.1 - Ulduar and one week in...

Well my original intention was to do a big post detailing the boss kills we've done in Ulduar 10 since it was launched last week, but a punishing raid schedule, a busy work week and a newly-blooming social life have pretty much confounded me. Suffice to say:

* Smart Casual have now downed five bosses in their first week in Ulduar: Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-001 Deconstructor, Ignis the Furnace Master and the Iron Council. The fights are relatively complicated and fun for 10-man fights, reminding me a lot of the Zul'Aman fights. They're tuned to be pretty challenging for a group which is only wearing 10-man drops.

* I also love the new Wintergrasp boss, Emalon the Storm-Watcher. It's a real test of skill, especially for the typically melee-heavy PVP pugs who are used to doing it. I'm glad I do it in guild groups for the most part.

* Retribution Paladins are up there with Death Knights as the most common DPSers in PuG raids and Wintergrasp. Much as I love my Ret offspec, I feel like a fecking sheep! It's almost enough to drive me to Holy!

* Add the new 2-min cooldown Divine Protection to the "Things I like about 3.1" list. It's the mutt's nuts, and it synergises nicely with Divine Sacrifice. I'm going to chain the two together in a macro for those times where the raid damage is more dangerous than the boss damage.

Things I like about 3.1 so far...

Well we europeans got 3.1 last night and although I didn't do any raiding, I got to play with the new mechanics. These are the things I love so far:

* Dual-Speccing: I am addicted to this feature. Having the ability to switch between Retribution and Protection with a 5-second cast is seriously fun. I've always liked Retribution, but having carved Ulushnar a niche as a decent Tank, I was unwilling to ever give that up. Now I no longer have to worry about it, and I'm actually considering some casual PVP as Ret with a friend. In fact I suspect armory lurkers will probably see Ulushnar in his Ret gear as much as his Prot gear.

* The new Guarded By The Light: I'd read about it, but some part of me refused to believe it. A 100% chance to refresh Divine Plea just by hitting someone?!! It sounded like madness but I now have the evidence of mine eyes. This is the kind of skill I've been wanting since Chaotic Divinity's Gruul days. I can finally keep up a solid threat rotation as an off-tank without going out of mana.

* Sacred Shield/the new Divine Guardian: Ok, so Sacred Shield got nerfed to one target per Paladin. But it was also made useful to Retribution and Protection Paladins with two sneaky buffs. The first was the fact that it now benefitted from the spellpower given by Sheath of Light and Touched by the Light. Wether this was a concious change or a bug fix I don't know but it was overdue. The second was the Divine Guardian talent, which now forms a staple of both my Protection and Retribution specs. It increases the duration and effectiveness of Sacred Shield. Of course it also makes it another button I have to press in my crowded rotations, but I can probably spare the Global Cooldown once a minute.

Tonight, we're going to Ulduar, let's see how that works out.

On timing...

So Blizzard release 3.1 and suddenly I go from scraping eight people together for Naxx to having 13-15 signs for each day. If I wasn't already a withered, bitter lump of Scottishness I'd go on a rant against human nature. Instead I'll complain about how this patch hits just after the beginning of the financial year, so I'm pretty busy at work, and spending all my spare time doing Guild admin for my freshly-interested guildies.

Further to my last post, I've revised my planned Protection spec to a slightly more cookie-cutterish 0/53/18 after being convinced of Crusade and Conviction's superiority over Seals of the Pure. I'm not getting rid of Pursuit of Justice though.

3.1 Preparations

Well, 3.1's been confirmed as incoming this week, and we'll finally be able to see if it was worth the wait.

Of course, along with Ulduar, the big change in 3.1 is the introduction of Dual specs, the ability to store and switch between two separate specs, with their own action bars and glyphs. With this in mind, here's my thoughts on how Ulu will be speccing come 3.1:

Tank Spec: 0/53/18

I really like Pursuit of Justice, and I've missed it since I specced out of it. Yes, I could get a run speed enchant, but it's just not the same thing!

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Righteous Defense -> Glyph of Divine Plea Righteous Defense barely gets used since Ulu got Hand of Reckoning, so it seems a good place to swap in the new hotness.
Glyph of Judgement -> Glyph of Exorcism If you use Exorcism ever second cooldown, then this glyph wins over the Glyph of Judgement. It's also nice for more burst at the pull.
Glyph of Seal of Vengeance -> Glyph of Seal of Vengeance Still absurdly overbudget and I'll probably use it until I end up with a prohibitive amount of Expertise from gear.

DPS Spec: 0/17/54

I know some folks are going into Holy for Aura Mastery, but the extra healing from Divinity will be nice with Divine Storm, JoL and Art of War. Plus I'm tempted by seeing how Divine Sacrifice can help out in a splash damage-heavy fight, and Divine Guardian will be nice now that Sacred Shield is single target-only.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Seal of Blood - Now that Rets don't have Spiritual Attunement, it's going to be important to get some mana back.
Glyph of Exorcism - More damage is always good.
Glyph of Judgement - See above.

Minor Glyphs (both specs): I don't see these changing, given that the selection of Paladin minor glyphs are less than inspiring.

Glyph of Blessing of Might
Glyph of Lay on Hands
Glyph of Sense Undead

Frequently Uttered Questions - United. (or F.U.Q-U)

1. What do you say if someone asks you if you're a good tank?

I tell them how many HP, duh!

2. What do you say if someone asks you how many HP you have?

I tell them to shut up because they know nothing about tanks and I wouldn't tank for them if they were the last pug on earth.

3. Aren't points 1 & 2 contradictory?

Yes. What's your point?

4. Ohhhh-kay, moving on, what should I be stacking, stat-wise?

In order:

a) Defense: Always have at least the minimum Defense needed (535 for 5-mans, 540 for raids). This is non-negotiable, even if you have to give up 5k health to get it. That wasn't 5k health you had, it was 5k health you borrowed from the Healer's mana pool. If you can, get more, but I'll cover this in point c).

b) Effective Health: Enough Stamina and Armor to survive a reasonable amount of burst damage from whichever boss is the instance's real meat-grinder. In practical terms, I find 21k health is fine for 5-man heroics and you'll be in easy street in raids with 24k+.

c) Avoidance: Now that you have enough EH to survive a few hits without a heal, it's a good idea to make those hits less frequent. Get what you can in Dodge, Parry and Defense rating. A mod like Tankadin will keep you right on how your total avoidance is shaping up.

d) Primary Threat Stats: Strength and Block Value. All of your damage-causing abilities scale off strength in some way, either via Attack Power, Shield Block Value or Weapon DPS. Block Value also increases your mitigation versus melee attacks significantly, especially if you're Block Capped (see below).

e) Secondary Threat stats: Hit and Expertise. I've ranked these bottom of the pile. Whilst they are nice to have, they aren't as critical to us as they are to our Warrior brethren. A missed attack doesn't dent our TPS that much, and between Combat Expertise and the Seal of Vengeance glyph, we have 16 Expertise without gear.

5. What's "Block Capped" then?

If your Dodge, Parry, Block and Miss chance add up to 102.4% with Holy Shield then you're considered "Block Capped", which means that all hits that aren't avoided by you will be blocked. Tankadins are currently the only tank that can do this, and it's apparently an assumed part of our mitigation when Blizz are tuning the various tanking classes.

In practical terms, it's difficult to get before you have Naxxramas10 gear, but it's a good goal to aim for. Again, the Tankadin Mod will keep you right on how close to the Block Cap you're getting.

6. What's the point of getting the minimum defense, or block capping? My healers are awesome enough to heal me through an occasional crit.

Tanking has two basic subroles: a) generate enough threat to let your DPS go apeshit, and b) remove all unecessary damage. If you get crit when you could have geared to avoid it, or take a hit when you could have geared to block it, then you are failing role b).

Best example I can give from my own experience is at Malygos 10. Maly hits Ulu in the 8-9k range before blocks. He also periodically uses an Arcane Breath for 14-15k with a follow-up explosion for a further 6k. That's the worst burst he can do in a 3 second period, and it comes to 13k DPS. If you block both those melee hits for 1.5k, then you've just shaved 1k off his DPS. If one of those Melee hits crits though, then his DPS over that 3 second burst becomes 16k, and you've suddenly become a lot harder to heal.

7. What weapon is best for me?

The highest DPS one-hander you can wield is always the best, regardless of speed. If you have the choice of a few with the same DPS, then pick the one that gives you the best stats.


8. Should I gear differently for certain fights, trash, etc?

Up to you. Personally, I don't get the point of putting on a different gear set for trash. It's fecking trash! It's only purpose is to eke out the 6-10 boss fights in an evening to a reasonable length of time and to punish you mercilessly if you wipe too many times. If you're wiping to trash out of anything other than carelessness you're either undergeared or Doing It Wrong.

However, if you do feel like you need to tune your gear for different bosses then ask yourself one question: What's my problem?

a) I'm dying to massive burst damage.

If your healers are alive, then the chances are you need more Effective Health. Load up on Stamina, Armor and Block Value (if you're block-capped or close to block-capped)

b) My healers run out of mana/complain I'm too hard to heal.

Sounds like you could use a bit more avoidance in your gear. You could also make sure your healers aren't too undergeared and if possible, try and get someone with Replenishment in your raid. Ultimately though, those factors will usually be out of your hands, whilst the ability to put on more avoidance gear is definately within them.

c) The boss hit his enrage timer.

First of all, was your DPS doing their job? 10-man/heroic DPS should be able to put out an average of 2k DPS each, with better geared people doing much more.

If they were all doing this, but were complaining that you were threat-capping them, then it might be an idea to look into more threat stats.

9. Why don't you mention 25-mans much?

Because I honestly don't have much experience with them. I run a 10-man guild, and although we occasionally take a run at the easier 25-man bosses with around 15 people, I have no desire to put myself back into the insanity which is the "casual" 25-man raid group.

10. Is it just me or...

It's just you. Shut up!

11. You're mean!

And you're and idiot, but after 10 minutes with your mum, I'll be significantly less mean. You'll still be stupid.

Hi, I'm Space Goat!

Well here it is, the much-threatened rebranding.

Drawing on one of the greatest television shows ever as inspiration for the name at least felt right. The content will unfortunately be the same rambling about tanking as a Paladin and running a small guild that I've maintained up until now. I'll try to make it entertaining, but I can promise it'll be self-involved at least!

Well what's there to say? Big changes in the Prot field promised in 3.1.

Divine Guardian is going the way of the Do-do, and it looks like we're getting something similar, Divine Sacrifice as an 11 point talent. The big difference is it isn't tied to Divine Shield so it'll allow us to use this ability whilst keeping aggro.

Why would we want a talent that makes us more damage? Well say you've got a fight where the boss damage is relatively insignificant, but the raid damage adds up (Loatheb springs to mind) then it's a way to absorb some of the damage. Another example would be a boss where you only tank him for part of the fight, like Hydross in SSC.

It's certainly going to give us some unique utility in 3.1, but I don't think (as the Chicken Little brigade may claim) that it's going to make us into off-tanks.

I'm also interested in the new Glyph of Divine Plea that offers 3% damage reduction when DP is up. I wonder if that, combined with the new Guarded By The Light (50/100% chance to refresh DP's duration when you hit a target) is intended to replace Blessing of Sanctuary. It feels a little clunky, but it could be what's on the dev's mind, which concerns me.

Enter Alter Ego!

Imagine a conversation between my plate-clad alter-egos; Ulushnar, a T7-clad Tankadin and Graysun, a freshly-80 Deathnub.

Ulushnar: So Gray, how's tanking working out for you?
Graysun: Not so great as it happens.
Ulushnar: How so?
Graysun: I'm not finding a lot of love in pick-up groups and whenever I try to tank for guildies, well frankly they wish I was you.
Ulushnar: That's fair, I am pretty awesome after all, but honestly, why should it matter in Naxxramas?
Graysun: Y'see, I think that's part of the problem. To the minds of the DPS, it's "just Naxx" so they throw caution to the wind, and splat, we're suddently 8-manning Patchwerk.
Ulushnar: So you were Hateful Strike tanking? I've never done that either and I' probably have f**ked it up as well.
Graysun: Possibly, but burst threat ain't my thing like yours. You might have given the Rogue and Fury Warrior some room to wiggle before they became raspberry jam.
Ulushnar: So that's it, one fight and you're calling it quits?
Graysun: Nah, whilst I accept I'm not an amazingly-geared tank I'm also fairly new on the learning curve Death Knight-wise. They accepted that with Halendir when he started because by the time he was coming into his own, you and Bele were getting bored with heroics, but by now they're purpled-out "pros" and don't like being threat-capped. It's like you always say...
Ulushnar: Gnome girls reach the spots others miss?
Graysun: No, well yes, that too; but what I meant was you've always said "the most important thing for a tank is confidence". I don't have that yet.
Ulushnar: Fair enough, so what now?
Graysun: Well I'm going back to DPS, but probably not Blood. If there's one good thing I picked up from the spec that Halendir gave to me, it's that Unholy's buckets o' fun.
Ulushnar: So you're becoming a Platelock then?
Graysun: Yep, I guess. I specced that way last night. It's pretty sweet, especially with the 2pc Tier 7 I picked up on Sunday. Did a couple of Pugs last night. Occulus was suprisingly decent, we managed to one-shot everything. After that I did Nexus with another group and I had to keep checking I wasn't in Frost Presence, the tank just couldn't keep the mobs off me. The AoE's pretty sick.

Rebranding

Well the old Wulfsblood.net domain finally expired on me. I'll be sorting out a new one in a few days, to reflect the point that I really haven't done much huntering in the last year or so. In the meantime, feel free to point your links at:

http://ulushnar.blogspot.com

Until I can find something better.

I really haven't updated this thing in about three weeks now, so apologies. In the interim, I finally got off my arse and got Graysun, my Death Knight, to 80. Originally I wanted to make him a DPS/PVP character, but the sad realities of getting pugs has forced me to spec him as a tank. I took the advice of our DK tank and specced him Unholy, although now that I've played with him a while, I'm starting to get a better idea of what's required.

I will say though that DPSing/Tanking as a Death Knight has given me a new appreciation of how much easier we have it. The lack of reliable frontloaded aggro is a massive pain when pugging in particular. When I went back to playing Ulu, I almost laughed at how easy it was.

Speaking of Ulu, I've hadd occasion to experiment with him as Retribution in Naxx10-level gear and I really liked the results! I cannot wait for dual speccing in 3.1! Also, Ulu finally got his 4th piece of T7 on Friday past. He now has everything except the crappy helm. I'm looking forward to trying my bubble wall out on something big and nasty before much longer.

3.1 Changes announced.

Ok, so some of the proposed changes to the Paladin class in 3.1 have been announced. It's a weird mixed bag:

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

I'd like to say: Finally! But I'm curious about what our new tier 1 5-pointer will be.

* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Another awesome change! Giving Paladins another ranged, on-demand damage ability is great. Combine it with the Glyph and we have another interrupt with a 15-sec cooldown. I'm curious about it's use in PVE though, and how one would go weaving it into the normal 969 rotation.

* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

The change to Avenger's Shield is awesome, it's something we've been begging for since the WotLK beta opened. The change to Shield of Righteousness is beyond awesome, so I'm not sure if it'll stay.

* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

This, plus Baselining BoK removes a lot of the bloat from the Protection Tree. It might actually be possible to get all the "necessary" talents for 51 points now.

* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

Sounds good, but a 50/100% chance on what? On refreshing Holy Shield? On Block/Parry/Dodge? On taking damage?

* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

Adds some primarily PVP utility to Thunderjudge. Doesn't make the talent any less mandatory, but it, like the Shield of the Templar change and the Exorcism change makes it more fun to be a Protadin in PVP.

Interesting changes. I didn't think there was anything particularly "wrong" with the state of Tankadins, but the new changes will allow us to pick up more fun talents from other trees at less sacrifice. I might actually be tempted to take Ulu into an Arena again as well.

Now we just have to wait and see how many of these changes make it to live!