September 2008
Monthly Archive
Ghostcrawler Post:
Protection — We want more tanks in the game. Main tanks. We think it’s fun to have a diversity of players and see how different spells, abilities and class mechanics get used to solve problems. A Protadin with the right skill and gear should be able to tank any fight in the game. Previously, we tried to push Prot into the offtank and AE tank roles. While your abilities are still really well suited for AE in particular, overall our philosophy has changed and we want you to be able to do anything the other tanks do. Note that this means other tanks will get better at AE tanking though. Prot represents a special challenge when not tanking because you can both heal and do dps and some players want to do either. Or both. One final comment, that you have already seen, is we want you to gear like a warrior: collect Strength and Stamina and use tanking weapons instead of caster weapons.
Emphasis is mine, something I have been professing for some time now ever since I got my hands on Hammer of the Righteous which got a change in the last patch before the current one. The tooltip caught up to the change which tied the damage of the ability with the DPS of the weapon and not the speed making it desirable for fast tank weapons. That are plentiful in Wrath of the Lich King and current content come 3.0.2 when it launches.
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After much debate, thought and, theory craft I have decided to propose a radical if crazy idea based on our mechanics changes for the protection paladin. Currently they are moving us to be much more attack power based and physical based, giving all our threat building spells attack power coefficients which are usually superior to the spell damage coefficients. I like these changes but something still bothers me and I thought it was Hammer of the Righteous at the time but now I come to see that perhaps the problem is our core mechanic Righteous Fury.
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It would seem that this ability, Hammer of the Righteous; should not warrant a huge amount of testing but given its place as the 51 point talent for Protection Paladins this ability deserves some thought. It is the lofty goal at the bottom of the tree, if you have gone this far then why not pick it up, and I think personally it is a fun ability that adds a great deal of interactivity to the class.
I have already espoused the virtues of this ability and I think it will become a mainstay of all paladin tanks; it does solid damage, solid threat, and applies seals to multiple targets; allowing us to tank multiple mobs without the need of Consecrate; although with the current changes to mana and Blessing of Sanctuary on the Beta mana is pretty easy to keep topped off. I rarely ran low, and I think that mana regen on the Beta is probably over tuned to be on the easy side overall.
More testing needs to be done but early reports suggest that the damage on Hammer of the Righteous is now doing damage based off of the weapon DPS instead of the damage range… see this thread on maintankadin.com for more information on this.
The Nexus
I did the Nexus tonight for the first time, myself two guild mates and a two folks from the beta. Our party makeup was Fury Warrior, Shadow Priest, Elemental Shaman, Holy Paladin and a Protection Paladin. The instance is very blue, but evocative and I liked the fact you can choose your path before tackling the first boss. We went to Ormorok the Tree-Shaper first.
The trash mobs here consisted of elemental trees and dryads, and small plant thrasher mobs that never actually died and just cocooned themselves to come back and pester us until you kill the boss. The boss himself was pretty straightforward tank and spank but he created spikes in the ground in a large area that shot you up in the air, they are relatively easy to avoid and he does not hit overly hard. We one shot this boss pretty easily and then made our way to Anomolous.
His trash was mostly energy like elemental spirits and dragon-kin. The most interesting mobs were Chaotic Rifts that seemed to create or summon Crazed Mana-Wraiths; I think the mana-wraiths do a mana drain because I was running low on mana consistently on these pulls. I recommend killing the Chaotic Rifts first to stop the spawns. The boss, Anomolous, was very interesting though; he attacks like a tank and spank and then turns into a chaotic rift and summons adds… the fight is very chaotic and long but a lot of fun. It keeps the tank on the move and I like that not too difficult but definitely fun and challenging.
We one shot this boss as well and made our way to Grand Magus Telestra; the trash pulls here were straight forward with humanoid spell casters making up the bulk of the pulls. The boss herself is another interesting fight, at 50% she splits into three versions one that is a shadow priest, another that is a fire mage, and a third that casts constant blizzards. Our healer died on this fight, and the elemental shaman kept me up and did damage. We actually wiped on her the first time, the split caught us by surprise. Once we dispatched these bosses we hit the final boss Keristrasza.
She is at the center and you thaw her out and then have to defeat her. She puts a freezing affect on you; but if you keep moving it eventually lessens but if you stand still it freezes you in place. This is again another mobile fight where strafe will be your friend; not overly difficult and we one shot this fight as well. Overall I like the Nexus, solid fun and very interesting boss encounters. In the gallery I have attached an image of a parse of my damage against Oromok for an idea of what Protection DPS will be like for those geared at the Tier 5/Tier 6 level.
Only thing that sucks is that I have gained several pieces of gear since then.
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Change is coming, and for many in this community it seems to be a point of understandable frustration and paranoia as to what we will be after 3.0 goes live. This class, not our spec but the class is changing on several fundamental levels, our seals will scale with attack power, many of our damage spells will scale with attack power, Blessing of Salvation is going away, and many of our spells are changing in reaction to core class mechanic changes.
For protection specifically the class is facing a gear change as our gear shifts to Strength and Stamina with no spell damage, except for the odd piece, in sight. This understandably has many people upset and I am sure when the change goes live we will have even more paladins who do not visit message boards or follow news sights even more alarmed. But these changes are coming and I think a healthy amount of skepticism is good irrational fear that we are either being dumbed down or will be “warriors” are unfounded.
But some basic tenets of what we hold true today will be changing:
Anticipation no longer grants 20 Defense: This is will be a huge change for gearing concerns but we must understand that this affects warriors as much as it affects paladins after the patch. Health levels may drop as we have to regem gear for Defense rating to meet the requirement to be uncrittable. I think this is a good thing overall exceeding the critical cap is not hard once you accumulate the gear and yes I know for some that isn’t easy but this is the truth in the long run. 5% to dodge will always be good, 20 Defense not so much if you have gear that compensates for the loss. I think it will diversify gemming and enchanting of gear; but if I am wrong then healthy debate is always warranted.
Warriors Lite: This means that we will look and play like warriors; I beg to differ but again this is more opinion then hard facts. The crux of this argument is usually the gear homogenization and the fact that we won’t have spell damage on our gear but we still do in the form of stamina and since we benefit from both spell power and attack power we still play differently and have different concerns then warriors. Thematically I don’t see a difference in Beta, I still use all the same spells and abilities just the mechanics and theory behind them have changed. But again this is all personal taste anyway.
Change is Inevitable: This class is changing and we can either rail against it or look at the changes understand why they are changing and then play it to our advantage. I don’t think life will be terrible for us, if anything after we tuned the way we should be, this class will be stronger than ever and we won’t face the uphill battle e had before. I know some enjoyed the underdog role, but it is old for me; I gain no sense of satisfaction any more from playing that game and I quite enjoy being on hopefully equal footing everywhere else.
P.S: Warriors, Death Knights, and Druids are not our enemies.
I got a pet penguin in the beta, attached a screenshot and also came across something different in my combat log; (Overkill) I guess to overheals it lets you know how much damage you did that exceeded the mob’s health. interesting little wrinkle… overall Patch 8905 is filled with surprises and content.
Naxx both 10 man and 25 man came out with this patch, gear for plate wearing tanks in live was changed to include strength and stamina dns dropped all spellpower from paladin tanking plate. A good change netting me quite abit of attack power and block value.
This is going to be a fun expansion. Also Paladin Naxx 10-Man Gear.
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