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!