Just wondering.

I don’t have too many inferences yet on where they will take us but there is some writing on the wall:

- I expect them to make changes to Hammer of the Righteous or Seal of Command and even possibly both.  I think the fact that our threat rotation is exactly the same in single target and AoE is just boring.  I look forward to this.

- The Dispel mechanics will definitely change some of how I play at least when it comes to dispelling my own magic effects like on Steelbreaker.

- I think paladins in general will get a low level instant attack ability to add to the low level experience and make it more interactive.  At least more interactive than auto-attack and judgement.

- More of a wish and inferred guess based on similar vanity shaman changes; but I suspect that the varying paladin races may get race specific mounts in Cataclysm.

The 16th will be a good day, I look forward to the new class changes being posted today!  And now some Thom Yorke to soothe your weary soul.

New patch notes!

General Highlights!

• Construction of the Crusaders’ Coliseum is complete. Testing not yet available. New raid normal and heroic modes for the Crusaders’ Coliseum can be toggled using the Dungeon Difficulty setting. This applies to 10 and 25 player versions. 10 player (normal), 25 player (normal), 10 player (heroic) and 25 player (heroic) all share separate raid lockout timers.
• Isle of Conquest, the new 40 vs. 40 player siege-style battleground is now available for testing.
• New druid art for cat and bear forms has been added. There are now five unique color schemes for each form and faction. Changing hair color (night elves) or skin tone (tauren) via the barbershop will change the look of one’s cat and bear forms.
• Block Value: The amount of bonus block value on all items has been doubled. This does not affect the base block value on shields or block value derived from strength.
• On-Use Block Value Items: All items and set bonuses that trigger temporary increases to block value have been modified. Instead of increasing their block value amount by 100% like other items, they have all had their effect durations doubled. This applies to Glyph of Deflection, Gnomeregan Autoblocker, Coren’s Lucky Coin, Lavanthor’s Talisman, Libram of Obstruction, Tome of the Lightbringer, Libram of the Sacred Shield, the tier 8 paladin Shield of Righteousness bonus, the tier 5 paladin Holy Shield bonus, and the tier 5 warrior Shield Block bonus.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now also increases stamina by 10%. This effect is not cumulative with Blessing of Kings.

Paladin Highlights!

• Exorcism: Now has a 1.5 second cast time, but can once again be used on players.
• Hand of Reckoning: Redesigned. Now does damage only when target does not currently have the caster targeted, but damage done increased to 50% of attack power, occurring after the taunt effect is applied.
• Judgement of Light: Now heals for 2% of the attacker’s maximum health instead of a variable amount based on the spell power and attack power of the judging paladin.
• Righteous Fury: No longer has a duration or mana cost, remaining until cancelled or death. Also cancelled when a Paladin activates a different talent specialization.
• Lay on Hands: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 10/20% instead of increasing the target’s armor.
• Seal of Vengeance and Seal of Corruption: These seals have been redesigned to deal substantially more damage. Now, once a paladin has 5 copies of the debuff from these seals on his or her target, on each swing the paladin will deal 33% weapon damage as Holy, with critical strikes dealing double damage.
• Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%.
• Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Currently, any damage taken by the paladin while at 35% health or below is reduced. Instead, any attack that would reduce the paladin to 35% health or below has its damage reduced. In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead set the paladin’s health to 10/20/30% of maximum.

Some big changes there… I am not sure what to think of it all just yet.

I have to wonder if I am just addicted or perhaps wired to continually achieve especially in World of Warcraft, although no where near the top I have a respectable amount at 6500… I don’t play often now, just login to raid but with new content coming I will probably get my dailies going again for extra money and tokens.

I love me some nerd points.

The Auriya encounter is all about the pull, the tanking part is relatively simple.  The most dificult part is to make sure she is turned in a direction that is advantageous to the raid after the fear.  If you are fear warded, resist the fear, or break it quickly then this is not an issue and you hould probably just stand there and have the raid run back.  If not just use your judgement and base where you face her on where the majority of the raid is feared to.  Move her as needed away from the void zones and push out as much damage as possible.

As far as Noblegarden is concerned I really hate this holiday, it encourages camping and doing unfun things.  I do like that alot of the items are able to be bought but the camping part and the static nature of the spawns lends the holiday a no-fun feel.  Worse then the Love Fool achievement in my opinion and I hope they rehaul this holiday next year and do soemthing better with it or just make it like it was a one day event with no attachment to the meta-achievement

for the mount.

Easily my least favorite holiday.

I find add tanking to probably be the most difficult and thankless role. Even more so in then ten-man version. We finally got the ten-man Undying achievement and still trying to get the 25-man achievement. I hope we can knock it out before Ulduar but if not there are other achievements to get and I won’t feel too bad about it. I really should update more often and will strive to get a post up at least weekly if not sooner.

In other news with all this extra time not playing I have taken to reading and enjoying my Changeling: The Lost books, if I am not doing one nerd thing it is another.

Oh and Happy Birthday to my girlfriend.

Patch 3.1 is shaping up to be a very interesting overhaul of the classes.  Eyonix listed some of the changes coming and they are at least on paper, amazing.

Paladin

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

· 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.

· 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.

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

· 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.

· 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.

The Blessing of Kings change will be awesome and free up five points for both Protection and Retribution; hopefully we will see an 11 point talent in the Protection Tree. The Exorcism change is interesting and should paladin DPS/TPS from dipping after we move into Ulduar.  Should also help with leveling as well and give Retribution an additional pulling ability besides Hand of Reckoning.  The Shield of the Templar change gives us a much needed low cooldown silence and allows us to pull casters from range.  This is a huge change, and I can’t wait to make use of it; might actually make Less-Rabi easier to do for those that have not done it yet. I like how they are consolidating the tree down, maybe we will get some new toys in the near future. I can only assume that we will have some fun talents to work with hopefully for Protection.

The Guarded by the Light change was hinted at in the Mana Changes post and should hopefully help to ease our mana consumption but it has an interesting side of effect of making us want to use Judgement of Wisdom instead of Light since Divine Plea will have a larger Healing reduction post patch, from 20% to 50%. The Judgement of the Justchange gives Protection more PvP utility and another interrupt silence on a low cooldown as well.  I am not sure if these will all stick but these all serve to make Protection very difficult to deal with for casters.  I might actually get some PvP achievements done now.

I really like the changes I can’t wait to see the rest and the overall Ulduar patch, this poses to be a very exciting update for the game.

Oh and Happy Birthday to me.

]]> http://www.vanifae.com/2009/02/06/patch-31-goodies/feed/ 0 http://www.vanifae.com/2009/01/28/the-last-laugh/ http://www.vanifae.com/2009/01/28/the-last-laugh/#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:33:42 +0000 Vanifae http://www.vanifae.com/?p=315 After vanquishing multitudes of Scourge, powerful minions of the Lich King, and even the venerable Sapphiron; we came before the master of the dread citadel Naxxramas.  No quarter was asked and none was given, the battle was joined against an immortal and indomitable foe… Kel’Thuzad cackled with madness as he did his best to throw us from his domain.

But it was I that had the Last Laugh when we threw down our enemy and crushed the evil within the dread citadel.

Other then that been replacing gear at a fevered pace, just check out my Armory for all my current gear.  Overall the experience is fantastic and the game is supr fun and I can’t wait to do 10-Man Naxx with my guild this weekend.

Kudos Blizzard, you did good.