Age of Conan: Graphics, Priest of Mitra

Continuing on, the graphics in this game are very nice. There are lots of options in character creation. Of course, the game aims for the "realistic" side of things, and thus tends to be mostly greens and browns. Seriously, I don't understand why everyone is so scared of bright, primary colors.

The water in particular, is superb. The way reflections interact with the surface is nothing short of spectacular. AoC requires a pretty hefty machine, but it uses that machine well.

Animations are very well done for the most part. The only quibble I have is that the female running animations seems a little odd. I don't think the way the elbows are positioned is quite right.

I'm skipping to the second character I made, as I want to talk about the first in more detail later. My second character was a Priest of Mitra, which is pretty much as pure a healer as you will get. You start off with a Smite spell which is pretty neat. It does a lot of damage early on, and it was pretty amusing to be one-shotting enemies as they get lifted up into the air and then dropped on the ground. Then at level 5 or so, it settled down into a more normal routine of needing to blast the mob several times.

There were some very nice touches for a priest class. They had a health buff which automatically hits everyone in your group and lasts an hour. The first healing spell I got was an Heal-Over-Time that was placed on the entire group. Are the days of Whack-A-Mole over?

The only weird part was that healing seems to be really weak. I was dishing out and taking about 20-40 damage per second. Yet my heal spell healed a grand total of 2 (!!) health every second (per person). I was trying it out and wondering if it was missing a zero or something, as it literally seemed pointless to cast. I'm not sure if healing changes later on, or if this is intended, but it seemed a little unusual.

I got the first city and started doing the destiny questline (sort of like a solo instance of the world with specific quests). That's a pretty neat idea and use of zoning. It's interesting to see more games move through time in the same zone. I didn't get very far, only to about level 7.

I do like the initial quests, though, as they are fairly meaningful, and not just "kill 10 rats." I died a few times, though it was mostly my fault for attacking multiple enemies.

So far though, I like the Priest of Mitra class. I'll probably try some of the other ones, but this class looks to be a solid choice for a healer who is used to other games.

Age of Conan: Installation, Races, Classes

I picked up Age of Conan last night on a whim, and thought I'd write about my first impressions. First off, this is probably going to sound unnecessarily negative. AoC does a lot of stuff well. For example, the servers were up, running and pretty solid, which, sadly, is an accomplishment for an MMO. I really only glitched out once (I died once and the dialog to resurrect didn't come up), so technically the game--so far--is smooth. My issues are almost entirely design-driven, which I suppose is progress for the MMO industry.

A general warning, the technical requirements are pretty steep. I wouldn't pick AoC up if you have less than the recommended specs.

I'll start with the install process. When we talk about Blizzard games, we often throw around the word "polish". Whenever someone asks for a concrete example of polish, I point to the installation process for World of Warcraft. When you install WoW, the installer plays a noticeable sound (an orcish drum sound, I believe) when it is ready for the next CD. This allows you to do something else while the game is installing, and still be alerted when it is time for the next CD. Then when you insert the next CD, the install process automatically picks up from where it left off. (My guess is the autorun of the new CD communicates with the installer.)

That is polish. Taking the time and effort to clean up the little details that other people would leave undone. AoC's install, in contrast, worked fine. But you had to manually check if the installer was ready for the next DVD, and you had to click the OK button after putting in the DVD. It's a small thing, but it really symbolizes the difference between WoW and AoC, between Blizzard and the rest of the gaming industry. AoC works, and is serviceable and fun, but WoW is polished.

On to races and classes. There are three races: civilized good guys, who are white; noble barbarians, who are also white; and evil bad guys, who are black. Gotta love the casual racism of the gaming industry. These racial distinctions are enforced in the game. If you roll a Cimmerian, you cannot pick a non-white skin colour. If you roll a Stygian, you cannot pick a non-dark skin colour.

And the good/evil divide extends to classes. The black people have a single neutral class (the Archer), and all the other classes are outright evil (Demonologist, necromancer, Herald of some elder demon god, priest of Set). Meanwhile the white people have mostly good or neutral classes (there is one evil class, the Dark Templar).

Of course, Funcom probably justifies being racist by claiming to be "true to Conan's lore." Yeah, well, Howard was pretty damn sexist, but I don't see AoC imposing any but the most cosmetic differences between males and females. There aren't any stat differences between male and female characters, and either gender can be any class. But then I guess Funcom is European, and therefore, "Racism good! Sexism forbidden!"

Funcom will probably react to this by trotting out some token black NPC who they claim is a good guy ("See, not all black people are totally evil"). But actions speak louder than words. In Age of Conan, if you want to play a good, heroic class, you make a white character. If you want to play an evil class, you make a black character.

Lack of Faith

Lately, I've been reading the forums and discussions about the proposed changes to raiding. It seems to me that there is a significant--and vocal--segment of raiders who lack faith in 25-man raiding as a fun and attractive activity.

Basically, their arguments are that Blizzard should continue with 25-man raiding because 25-man raiders are somehow the most deserving of WoW players. All other activities must have significantly lower rewards so that people who wish to progress have no choice other than 25-mans.

It seems that deep down, in their heart of hearts, they fear that most people do not like raiding. That other people just raid for gear. And since they like raiding, they try to promote raiding by loudly denigrating all other choices, and seek to have Blizzard stack the deck in favour of raiding. Basically, they seem to think that if raiding had to compete with other activities on a level playing field, it would lose out.

This lack of faith hurts the raiding cause far more than it helps. Blizzard should not make 25-man raids because 25-man raiders are somehow "more deserving". Blizzard should make 25-man raids because raiding is fun, and a large portion of the audience enjoys it! Blizzard should make more battlegrounds because battlegrounds are fun! Blizzard should make more 5-mans, because dungeons are fun! Blizzard should make more reputation grinds, because grinding rep is...wait, no, no it isn't.

The raiding community--especially the high end--does a really poor job conveying the fact that raiding is fun to non-raiders. We do a lot of complaining, of calling people "bads", of indulging ourselves in trying to prove we are better than "casuals". But these types of behavior hurt raiding far more than they help.

Imagine you are a new 70, thinking about raiding. You take a look at the Raid & Dungeons forums on the WoW forums. Do you honestly want to end up in guild with people like that? Or your realm forums. I'm sure you've seen a newish guild post about their latest triumph, and get torn to shreds by some high-end raider sneering, "Months behind". Can raiding really be fun if raiders act like this?

The thing is that raiding is fun. Working together as a team to kill a dragon is a thrill. Watching a raid move through the complex dance that is a boss fight is an experience. Even wiping is fun (to a degree) as you slowly get better and better, as you get closer and closer to victory. Raiding is more than capable of holding its own against the other options in this game.

The problem with raiding is getting new people to try it, trying to convey to new people that yes, this is worth doing, that raiding is fun in and of itself, and the loot is just icing on the cake. If we raiders want Blizzard to keep making 25-man raids, the best path is to get more people raiding.

This is why the 10-man raid progression is worth having. The single largest barrier to getting new people raiding is not gear or skill. Gear improves with time, and skills can be learned and taught. The major barrier is time. It is getting people used to the idea of blocking out one or two evenings a week for WoW. Getting someone to say, "I raid on Thursdays" is 95% of the battle of creating a new raider. 10-man raids will do this, will allow people to become raiders in the safety and comfort of a small guild. From there, it's just a small step to the 25-mans. 10-mans also offer a safety net, so that if 25-mans don't work out, you still have options to progress, to see new content.

People will raid if they believe that raiding is fun. Emphasising that raiding is an enjoyable activity, and nurturing and being helpful to the new raiding guilds, will do far more for the cause of 25-man raids than trying to argue that raiders are somehow "more deserving" of Blizzard's time than other players.

WotLK 10/25-Man Raids

Raiding is undergoing some pretty interesting changes in WotLK. The main points that I've seen are:

• Each raid instance will have a 10-man version and a 25-man version.
• 25-man raids will drop loot one tier higher than 10-mans.
• No attunements or keys for any raids.

I must confess that when I first saw this, my immediate thought was, "Wow, that's going to create a lot of work for me." I maintain the Guild Progress thread on the Skywall forums, which lists the raiding guilds, their website, and what bosses they've killed, ordered roughly by how far each guild has gotten in endgame.

With two separate progressions, how would this thread be ordered? Should I have two lists, one for each raid size? Should guilds be classed as 25-man guilds or 10-man guilds, or listed in both lists? I expect the 25-man guilds to do the 10-man instances, and is it really worth cluttering up the list with the same Nexus-25 and Nexus-10 bosses?

Of course, these concerns are pretty trivial. In pretty much all other respects, these changes to raiding are an unambiguous win. Content creation is expensive, and I think that this will allow a lot more people to see the raid dungeons.

I think that 25-mans are pretty clearly pitched as the hardcore option, and probably will be tuned very tightly. The 10-mans will still be complex, but will definitely be tuned lower than the equivalent 25-man. Arthas-10 will be easier than Arthas-25. The loot structure is set up for that. Remember that for raiding, the quality of loot should depend on the difficulty of the encounter. Better loot equals higher difficulty.

Various other people are debating if 10-man encounters can be as epic as 25-man encounters. I'm not really sure I know that answer. Epic has a lot to do with lore and the archetypes of the adversaries, not just the complexity or difficulty of the fight. But really, the difference in "epicness" doesn't matter:

Is it better for Arthas to be an epic 25-man fight you never see, or for Arthas to be a less epic 10-man that you get to participate in?

I think Blizzard's plan strikes the best balance. As long as Arthas-10 is harder then the 10-man bosses that come before him, that there is an actual difficulty progression in 10-man raiding, I think everything will be fine.

The interesting questions will be how guilds react to the changed situation. Will the 25-man guilds do the 10-man raids? Will they recruit from the 10-man guilds? What will happen when someone burns out of 25-man raiding? Will they quit the game, or will they see 10-man raiding as a good alternative (huge wins for Blizzard if people take this path)? Will "softcore" guilds--who work on 25-mans at a slower pace--continue to exist, or will the only 25-man guilds be ones that raid 5 or more days in the week?

Exciting times ahead.

Lil Timmy and the White Kitten

The very first non-combat pet I bought was a White Kitten, which is sold by Lil Timmy, who occasionally wanders in Stormwind. Coriel was only level 12 or 13 at the time. This was over two years ago, way back when I was still new, before I knew about such options as Instant Quest Text.

I remember running across Lil Timmy, and clicking on him, and reading his story about how his family's cat had kittens and they couldn't afford to keep them. So he had to sell them, or they would have to be drowned. But the kitten cost about 60 silver, which at level 12 was pretty much all the money I had.

I've never been a big non-combat pet collector, as they tend to take up too much inventory space for my tastes. I think I spent several minutes deciding whether or not I should spend all my money on something that had no obvious value. But what sort of paladin can pass up a kitten in distress? So I spent the silver, got the kitten, and it's been in my inventory ever since. That kitten has been all over Azeroth, and has gone to the Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Outlands, and many other places where kittens were not meant to go.

Yesterday, I ran across Lil Timmy again. This time when I clicked on him, there was no story, as I was taken straight to the Vendor screen. It seemed unusual at the time, but I chalked it up to not correctly remembering an event that happened two years ago.

However, later I realized what had happened. Several patches ago, there was a change to NPCs. If an NPC only had one option, for example a windrider asking if you wanted to fly somewhere, the game would automatically open that option, rather than making you click through a screen of flavour text. Lil Timmy was one such vendor. The only option you could pick after the flavor text was the option to buy the White Kitten, which opened up the Vendor screen. So like all the other NPCs, the flavour text got skipped.

I really liked the change when it was first implemented, and I still do. 99% of the time, it's an extra annoyance to click through an NPC's initial screen, especially when it is an NPC that you interact with again and again, and when you haven't found out about Instant Quest Text yet. The windriders were the worst for this.

But almost all changes are trade-offs, which can have unexpected ramifications, and Lil Timmy falls in that 1%. Without his story text, he's just a random boy selling a somewhat rare pet. And the game is slightly diminished for that.

WotLK Raid Makeup

Raids in Wrath of the Lich King need to be balanced around 20% healers. There are many reasons for this:

1. The introduction of Deathknights as a DPS/Tanking class means that there is extra competition for the non-healing slots.

2. Blizzard has done a really good job of making non-healing specs raid-viable, and that means even more competition for the non-healing slots. Let's say you want to bring an Enhancement and an Elemental Shaman. You need at least 2 Resto Shamans to fill out the healing quota, so you're looking at 4 shamans in total. That means you are taking one slot away from a pure DPS class, and that's unfair to them.

3. The rest of the game is balanced around 20% healers, so bring raiding in line makes balancing the population easier.

4. Healers have always been the hardest role to recruit for. Requiring less healers and more DPS will make more players happy.

Take a look at this proposed WotLK raid makeup:

Group 1 - Prot Warrior, Prot Paladin, Feral Druid, Deathknight, Deathknight
Group 2 - Rogue, Rogue, DPS Warrior, Enhance Shaman, Ret Paladin
Group 3 - Balance Druid, Mage, Mage, Elemental Shaman, Shadow Priest
Group 4 - Warlock, Warlock, Warlock/Mage, Survival Hunter, Hunter
Group 5 - Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Holy Paladin, Resto Shaman, Resto Druid

To me, that looks like a gorgeous raid makeup. Every class has 2 or 3 slots. No class takes more than its share, and no class is completely left out. There's lots of different specs, and lots of synergy and options available.

However, this setup is completely useless under today's raiding conditions. There simply aren't enough healers. But if raids are balanced around 20% healing, raid compositions like this can be viable, and I think that would make raiding healthier and more enjoyable.

Divine Intervention Idea

Divine Intervention is a very weird spell. The spell itself is a terrible, terrible mechanic. You can only cast it on another person, who must be a resser AND in a position where she won't draw aggro when the fight ends. Compare that to the Warlock soulstone, or Shaman self-res. And yet the flavour of Divine Intervention--the paladin sacrificing herself to save her companion--is so strong, that the spell somehow works.

In reality, the major use for Divine Intervention is to help the paladin avoid a repair bill. It would be nice to have DI do something useful, while still retaining its flavour.

Tharok and I were talking about it, and came up with the following:

Divine Intervention
Instant Cast, Reagent: Symbol of Divinity, 100 yards range, 60 min cooldown
The paladin sacrifices herself to return all other dead group members to life with X health and Y mana. This spell can be cast in combat.

So it's a combat res, but the paladin has to die. It's possible to get up to a 4 for 1 trade, but you can only resurrect people in your group. You'd probably need to combine this with preventing groups from being changed in combat, and maybe give druids a real resurrection spell as well.

Edit: Actually, Divine Intervention is a really interesting spell from a design point of view. The key element of the spell is that the paladin has to die, to sacrifice herself. However, the paladin is often the healer or the tank, and usually when the tank or healer dies, the group wipes soon after. So you need an effect which makes a large impact, and can lead to the group defeating the fight, but which overcomes the extremely large drawback of losing the tank/healer.

A 2-cycle Example

Perhaps an example will help illustrate the difference between 2-cycle DPS and normal DPS.

You are a caster with 1000 mana. The next fight is 90 seconds long. You have the following two spells:

Burn Spell - 1.5s cast, 500 damage, 100 mana cost
Efficient Spell - 1.5s cast, 100 damage, 10 mana cost

What combination of spells produces the maximum damage?

Rather than actually using an algorithm, we'll just list out all the possibilities:



The most damage comes when you cast 4 Burn spells and 56 Efficient spells. Now let's make a slight change, and add 20 mana to your mana pool, for a total of 1020 mana.



This time, maximum damage comes from casting 5 Burn spells and only 52 Efficient spells. You even spend 4.5s doing nothing! The extra mana, a Longevity stat, allows you to do more damage by spending more time in burn mode. Note that this system is also very sensitive to fight length. If the fight was longer or shorter, that would have produced a different result. You could also increase damage by adding DPS stats, making each individual spell hit a bit harder.

Now, contrast this system to the process used by my Destruction (Shadow) Warlock. I don't have two spells, I only have Shadow Bolt. Adding 20 mana doesn't really do a whole lot. I spend all of my time and effort making my Shadow Bolt hit harder (spell damage, crit rating) and more often (hit rating, haste). Longevity stats are far less useful than DPS stats.

Of course, optimizing those DPS stats is pretty complex. But it's a completely different process than balancing Longevity and DPS stats.

Tension in Gearing: Arcane Mages

In the comments to the previous post, Kadaan makes a very strong case that Arcane Mages have to balance between Damage and Longevity stats, and have very similar tension in gearing as healers and tanks.

So why are Arcane Mages special? Arcane mages possess a spammable, high dps, high mana-cost, unsustainable nuke in Arcane Blast. Because Arcane Blast cannot be spammed for the entire fight, an Arcane mage has to use what Elitist Jerks calls a "2-cycle theorem of spell selection," where they alternate "between a mana intensive burn mode and a mana efficient mode." The burn mode consists of spamming Arcane Blasts and the efficient mode is usually something like Frostbolts or Scorch.

Getting the correct ratio of burn mode time to efficient mode time to maximize damage done is non-trivial, even before you take upgrading gear into account. It's a Linear Programming problem, and can be solved using the simplex algorithm for a given initial gear set and fight length. Under this setup, Longevity stats are valuable because they allow you to increase the amount of time in burn mode, which increases total damage done, even if those stats do not increase the DPS of either mode directly!

In a lot of ways, it's very similar to paladin healing mechanics, in that we have a burn mode, Holy Light, and an efficient mode, Flash of Light. The major difference is that the spell paladins use is dictated more by incoming damage in the short-term future, rather than attempting to maximize total raw healing done.

However, Arcane Mages are very different from most other DPS classes in the game. Most of the DPS classes use the simple DPS algorithm that I've outlined before. They have a single, sustainable nuke (Sinster Strike, Shadow Bolt, Fireball, etc.) that they rely on, while juggling cooldowns for certain higher-dps abilities and lower-dps enablers. I'm not sure I know of any other class that uses a 2-cycle spell rotation. Perhaps Balance druids with Starfire and Wrath.

(Note for the random DPS who seem to think I am putting them down: the simple algorithm is only "simple" in comparison to the 2-cycle algorithm. Please do not interpret this as me insulting you.)

Now, should more DPS classes have a setup such that they have to use a 2-cycle rotation, and thus increase tension when gearing? Maybe. However, one issue is that a burn mode can be quite devastating in PvP, where burst damage is more important than total damage done. Arcane Blast keeps this in check by making the mage take time to ramp up to the high-dps setting.

Tension in Gearing

When it comes to choosing gear, tanks and healers seem to differ from DPS in a significant way. Tanks and healers are trying to reach a balance between two points, while DPS is only intent on maximizing one point.

Tanks need to choose between Survivability and Threat. There's no need to put out 50% more threat than the nearest DPS, and there's no need to have so much health that you never drop below 75% health. Similarly, healers need to choose between Healing Throughput and Mana Longevity. You need to put out enough healing to keep people alive, but you also need enough mana to last the entire fight.

DPS, on the other hand, really optimizes for only one thing, DPS. When looking at gear, pretty much the only thing that matters is which gear results in higher damage.

Part of the reason for the difference is that, past a certain point, Threat, Survivability, Healing Throughput and Mana Longevity stops being useful. But higher DPS is *always* useful. There's no tension, no balance you need to maintain as DPS.

The ramifications for this show up in a lot of different places. Tank and Healer builds often make trade-offs. DPS builds, on the other hand, are pretty much the maximum damage builds possible. Tanks and Healers are more likely to use different colour gems because each color enhances a different aspect. On the other hand, DPS absolutely hate blue gems, because blue gems rarely contribute to increasing damage.

I'm not really sure which is a better system. DPS is simpler and straightforward, and makes gear evaluation a lot easier. As well, you can minimize the amount of gear you carry. Tank and healer gear can get more complex, and you can try for a balance that is very specific to the needs of a specific fight.

The DPS class that comes the closest to needing a balance are mages, and there is a lot of complaints among mages for needing that balance. Mages complain that Spirit is useless, about needing to use Mage Armor over Molten Armor, etc. Mage builds rarely emphasize the trade-off, and usually sacrifice longevity for DPS.

The Dark Secret of Paladin Levelling

The dark secret of paladin levelling is that the whole Seal/Judgement system--though it looks shiny and complex on the outside--is pretty much irrelevant. 95% of the time, you're better off casting or judging Righteousness (or Command if Retribution), rather than trying to debuff the mob with a special Judgement.

To see this, take a look at Judgement of the Crusader. It increases your damage from subsequent Holy sources, which is usually Seal/Judgement of Righteousness. But instead of judging Crusader, you could have started by judging Righteousness. Your subsequent hits are smaller, but you do a chunk of damage up front. Each method takes pretty much the same time to kill a normal mob.

But judging Righteousness also has the advantage of using less mana, as you can judge the seal you already have running instead of casting a new Seal. For example, if you are fighting two mobs, you can go:

1. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
2. Judge Righteousness on mob 1.
3. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
4. Kill mob 1.
5. Judge Righteousness on mob 2.
6. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
7. Kill mob 2.

That's 3 Seals and 2 Judgements. Now if you debuffed each mob with Crusader first, you end up with:

1. Cast Seal of the Crusader.
2. Judge Crusader on mob 1.
3. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
4. Kill mob 1.
5. Cast Seal of the Crusader.
6. Judge Crusader on mob 2.
7. Cast Seal of Righteousness.
8. Kill mob 2.

That's 4 Seals and 2 Judgements. If you want to debuff mobs, you essentially cast an extra Seal for each mob. And given that it's pretty much the same damage either way, you save mana by using Righteousness all the time. That increases your uptime, allows you to run Blessing of Might instead of Wisdom, which lets you kill even faster, and generally makes you more durable.

That's not to say that the Judgement debuffs are useless, just that their use is very specialized. Judgement of the Crusader is good for fighting much higher level mobs or elites, which take a long time to kill. Light and Wisdom are great in groups. Justice is invaluable to keep your target from running off and aggroing other mobs.

But 95% of the time, you're better off ignoring the whole Seal/Judgement system and sticking with Righteousness when levelling.

The Failure of Team-based Ratings

Patch 2.4.2 and Season 4 have some big changes coming for PvP. The most important change, in my opinion, is the following:

- If a character’s personal rating is more than 150 points below the team rating, they will earn points based on their personal rating instead of the team rating.
- If the average personal rating of the players queuing for a game is more than 150 points below the team’s rating, the team will be queued against an opponent matching or similar to the average personal rating.

This is Blizzard throwing in the towel on team-based ratings. Which, quite frankly, is needed.

The point of a rating system, as I have pointed out before, is to measure the skill* of a player. But in a world where you can easily join, leave, form and dissolve teams, the rating system quickly bears no resemblance to reality. Team-based ratings are simply too vulnerable to exploitation. Point-selling by high-end teams is endemic.

In the ideal scenario, a player's rating should quickly settle around its true value, and after that, change fairly slowly. You should not be able to reset it. Wild swings after the system becomes settled is a sign of a flawed system.

Team-based ratings were a bad idea to start with. Hopefully in WotLK, Blizzard will implement a proper personal rating and reward system for PvP.

Once ratings settle, there are a lot of interesting things Blizzard could do. For example, you could have a Tournament each Saturday. Teams would be divided by rating bands, and you could give the winner in each band enough Arena Points for a bonus item. Under the current system, if you did this, you'd probably end up with some full Gladiator team that just started a new team in your bracket, and they would romp all over everyone.

I would take a look at games like Magic Online, which--even though they have a rating system--don't rely solely on ratings to hand out rewards.

*Where "skill" means the ability to defeat the other team, and may include gear.

Ask Coriel: Healing Trinkets

Jammy asks:

So my guild is just starting out in SSC/TK and I was wondering what the best possible trinkets for a healadin would be. As of right now, I currently use the Lower City prayerbook, and the Ribbon of Sacrifice from Kara, occasionally swapping out a couple of JC trinkets, like the Talasite Owl or the Living Ruby Serpent. Any other suggestions I might shoot for?

I use the [Lower City Prayerbook] and [Ribbon of Sacrifice] myself. They're pretty decent trinkets for that level.

The only trinkets I'd really suggest as possible upgrades (from lower
content) are:
- [Battlemaster's Perseverance] (Badges, Honor)
- [Pendant of the Violet Eye] from Shade of Aran
- [Tome of Diabolic Remedy] from Hex Lord Malacrass
- [Figurine: Seaspray Albatross] from Shattered Sun Offensive
- [Vial of the Sunwell] from Heroic Magister's Terrace

There are 3 or 4 decent trinkets coming up in T5 content. Don't forget about spell crit trinkets. There's a really nice spell crit trinket off Karathress ([Sextant of Unstable Currents]).

Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about trinkets. You have a solid pair. If you can get one of the ones on the list above easily, go for it, but don't sweat it. Also, I find that making a macro to automatically use your trinkets (especially LCP) when you cast a spell will help ensure you get maximum use out of them.

Something like:

/use Ribbon of Sacrifice
/use Lower City Prayerbook
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast Flash of Light

Any trinkets that I may have missed?

Ask Coriel: Pursuit of Justice for a Tank?

Jarilo asks:

I was just wondering what you thought about pursuit of justice as a talent for protection paladins running instances and raids. Is it a useful talent? Does it have a noticeable impact on the amount of spell damage the paladin takes? Does it even work for PvE, or is it only worth it for PvP? My husband has a prot pally and we were noticing a bit of difficulty in Magisters Terrace from the large amount of damage done by spellcasters. We're finding conflicting reports from google searches, and wondered if you knew one way or the other?

As far as I know, Pursuit of Justice will work in PvE. Your husband's paladin will take 3% less spell damage overall, which can help in magic-heavy fights. And the speed increase is really nice.

The real problem is where do you take the extra points from? The best idea is probably stealing some points from Anticipation. You'll take a little more physical damage, in order to take a little less spell damage. I'd suggest a build like this: 0/46/15.

Also, if you raid, be careful to stay both uncrittable and uncrushable if you do this. If your defense is too low, and you can't afford to lose points in Anticipation, I'd probably take the points from Precision instead.

Wipe Recovery

Moving off the topic of my performance, spending a week with that guild definitely exposed me to some new (to me) ideas and concepts.

One interesting thing is that Reclaimed never used wipe recovery tools. After a wipe, the entire raid always released and ran back. This is in stark contrast to all the other guilds I have ever been. We almost always soulstoned a priest or paladin, and then relied on the healers to resurrect the raid, unless you couldn't recover from the fight.

Running back appears slower at first glance, but is it really? It takes 70 seconds to fully resurrect a raid under perfect conditions. And usually conditions are not perfect. Resurrections will overlap or you'll have to hunt down someone's body. Running probably doesn't take that much longer.

Additionly, people often decide to go AFK after a wipe (post-res if you're lucky, pre-res if you're not). Everyone running keeps everyone at their computer, actually doing something. You don't have to waste time waiting for everyone to get back after from being AFK.

Finally, always running means you are expected to use your Soulstones and Ankhs in battle, which can make a real difference. Getting a mage to return from the dead can be a life-saver, and turn a potential wipe into a victory.

It's probably a small thing, but it's just something that none of my previous guilds did, and maybe a tactic that a lot of smaller/lower level guilds have not considered.

WWS Reports

Several commenters asked for WWS reports, so here they are. I was only present for the Black Temple and Mount Hyjal parts.

1. Tuesday - BT
2. Wednesday - BT
3. Thursday - BT/MH
4. Monday - MH

Please don't comment on Reclaimed in general. I would have anonymized the reports, but that option appears to have been disabled.

Some general notes. On Tuesday and Wednesday, my HL5/FoL7 macro was messed up, resulting in me casting many more HL5 than I intended. Ratio should have been about 1:7, but was 1:3 instead. I switched to just doing FoL7 (and HL11) after that.

I wiped the raid once on Gorefiend. I died in the wrong spot, and didn't realize you could shoot other people's constructs--I thought it was like Leotheras for some reason--so I'm pretty sure I was not shooting my own constructs. I also wiped the raid once on Archimonde (Doomfire).

Other than that, the obvious healing error I noticed was on Bloodboil. I really should have been faster on the draw to heal the Fel-Raged person. I also needed to do a better job keeping the paladin tanking the Hyjal waves up.

I do think my healing mix should have more HL11 and less FoL7, but the tension between cast time, mana, and other healing was hard to judge. I think I should have defaulted more to HL11 when in doubt.

As for gear, I'll try and log out in healing gear (though I am Retribution at the moment). When Holy I have about +1925 healing, and the gear is mostly at the T5 level. I heal using Grid and mouseover macros.

Thanks for all the help and comments so far.

How to Improve My Game?

So Reclaimed denied my application on Wednesday. They cited poor healing and poor situational awareness as the reasons. And quite honestly, looking at the WWS reports for those raid nights, I agree with them. I had very low total healing, and did a poor job overall.

I'm not sure what it was, maybe it was a bad week, maybe it was because it was the first time I had seen Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, maybe it was adjusting to the speed of their playstyle or maybe it was because my skills are simply not good enough. It's probably a combination of all those factors.

One thing is pretty clear: I need to improve my game. However, I'm not sure how to go about doing that.

Gear and theory-wise, I believe that I am solid. It's more the intangible parts that I need to work on. And kind of honestly, I'm drawing a blank as to how to improve them. Should I do more heroics? Try PvP in earnest?

Any suggestions you guys have would be appreciated.

Other People

After reading some recent posts from Galoheart and Big Bear Butt Blogger, I have solidified my view that the central paradox of MMOs is:

The best thing about MMOs is that you can play with other people.

The worst thing about MMOs is that you have to play with other people.

In many ways, WoW was the first MMO to really grasp this distinction. And a huge amount of the angst and conflict at the level cap comes when the game transitions from focusing on the first style to focusing on the second style. We play this game to play with other people, yet playing with other people often causes a lot of problems.

It's amazing fun to play with other people. It's what sets this genre apart from all the other games out there. I still believe that single best thrill in WoW is downing a hard new boss with a raid of friends. A hard-fought, evenly matched Arena battle might compare. They're both the same idea: defeat a hard challenge because you worked together as a team.

Yet other people are also the worst part of MMOs. Drama, people going afk, griefing, etc. So many problems in this game aren't really problems with the game itself, but with people. And sometimes it's just simple logistics. Person A only has 20 minutes to play, so that's just not enough time to do something as a group.

There are a ton of issues where the difference comes into play. Take raiders vs casuals. Raiding demands that you play with a large number of other people, and thus places strict demands on people in order to make the playstyle reliable. Casual places fewer demands, but you often end up playing by yourself.

PvE vs PvP. The real advantage PvP has over raiding is that it involves fewer "other people". Battlegrounds you can essentially solo. Arenas involve 1 to 4 other people.

The shortage of tanks and healers. DPS "can" play with other people. Tanks and healers "have to" play with other people.

Realistically, what can a game company do? The entire point of these games is to play with other people, yet the more you force people to play together the harder it becomes to consistently enjoy the experience. I know there are other MMOs who force you to group all the time, but I also believe that is a reason they haven't achieved the success of WoW.

In the end, all I have to offer are the (paraphrased) words of the great philosopher Homer J. Simpson, "other people: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Updates

I'm currently applying to Reclaimed, which is one of the more advanced guilds on Skywall, working on Sunwell at the moment. I thought it would be interesting to try a more hardcore approach to raiding for a while. I respecced back to Holy and am healing for the most part.

I haven't actually seen Sunwell yet, but I did get taken on a Black Temple run, which was pretty interesting. It's illuminating to see how this guild does stuff.

The biggest thing is that they are fast. They just move from trash pack to pack swiftly. People go afk, come back, the raid keeps going. Heck, the main tank went afk and the raid kept going, just using the other tanks. Even boss attempts are fast. Wipe, everyone release, run back in, buff and pull again. It seems like this guild gets in three attempts in the same time it would take the other guilds I've been in to do one attempt.

The pace is the hardest thing for me to get used to. I honestly couldn't tell you very much about the bosses in the first part of Black Temple, as it's kind of a blur.

All in all, it's been a pretty interesting experience so far. We'll see how things turn out.

Are Consumables Bad Design?

I've been watching the discussion about Brutallis, the second boss in Sunwell, and the first real gear check in The Burning Crusade. One thing that has jumped out at me is the side discussion about Leatherworking drums. Drums are items which can only be used by leatherworkers, but provide a temporary buff to the group. Apparently they are quite powerful, and are pushing people to do things like stack the raid with leatherworkers or change professions.

Drums are just the latest consumable to have issues. Flasks and elixirs got sorted into the Battle/Guardian system to keep them under control. There are complaints that the caster classes have to chain mana potions every two minutes.

So it begs the question: Are consumables--items which give a temporary bonus and are then destroyed--inherently bad design?

In theory, potions and flasks are pretty cool. They're a strong part of fantasy literature, and the idea of brewing elixirs is pretty neat.

But in practice, consumables tend to be annoying. Because they are powerful, content tends to be balanced with the expectation that the players are using them. If content wasn't balanced around that, a buffed group would find it too easy. As well, farming materials or money for consumables is something you have to do for every raid. Basically, you're continously expending a lot of effort just to stay level.

Permanent items on the other hand, like armor, enchants, and gems have a large initial cost, but once you meet that cost you're set. You've actually achieved something, and your character will always be better from that point. To me, gathering the materials for a [Red Belt of Battle] seems much more worthwhile, and much more fun, than gathering the materials for flasks for the next week of raiding.

Of course, WoW can't remove consumables entirely, as the Alchemy profession is based on them. But it might be a good idea for a new game to simply not include consumables. Make buffs either permanent or easily renewable. In many ways, I think the endgame would be a better place if consumables didn't exist.

Blessing Assignment Patterns

In my Guide to Blessings, I originally advocated assigning Blessings as follows:

Pattern 1: Combined Might/Wisdom

Paladin 1 - Light on tanks, Wisdom on hunters, Salvation on everyone else
Paladin 2 - Wisdom on casters, Might on melee and hunters
Paladin 3 - Kings

This pattern has its advantages, mainly that all the complexity of blessing assignments is put on the shoulders of Paladin 1. This means that Paladins 2 and 3 have simpler assignments, which can be a great boon for an entry-level raid.

However, this pattern does have disadvantages. To maximize effectiveness, Paladin 1 needs Improved Wisdom, while Paladin 2 needs both Improved Wisdom and Improved Might. Paladin 3 needs Kings, of course. It is rare that you will get 3 paladins with exactly the right buffs, especially if you run a Retribution paladin.

So let's take a look at a second pattern:

Pattern 2: Split Might/Wisdom

Paladin 1: Light on tanks, Salvation on melee, Wisdom on casters and hunters
Paladin 2: Salvation on casters, Might on tanks, melee and hunters
Paladin 3: Kings

This pattern greatly reduces the requirements for maximum effectiveness. Paladin 1 needs Improved Wisdom, Paladin 2 needs Improved Might, and Paladin 3 needs Kings. This is much easier to get, and works well with a Retribution paladin.

The downside is that the complexity is split up between the first two paladins, and no single paladin is responsible for keeping Salvation up.

Ability Names

Something that Blizzard does extremely well, but goes uncommented on by most people, is the naming system for talents and abilities. The names for each class are extremely well-chosen, and do a superb job of reinforcing that class’s identity.

Take rogues, for example: ambush, mutilate, backstab, rupture, garrote, sinister strike, crippling poison, hemorrhage. Brutal, guttural words. Words which are perfect for the rogue.

Paladins have might, wisdom, justice, crusader, light’s grace, avenger's shield, vengeance. Blessing of Kings. Again, the words used are chosen for deliberate effect, reinforcing the class identity.

Warlocks have corruption, doom, agony, immolate, drain life. Words that evoke the dark nature of the warlock.

You can see similar effects for all the other classes. Attention to details like these is what makes Blizzard games so polished, and their Creative/Naming team has done an outstanding job with ability and talent names.

It's one of those things that I never really thought about, until I saw a different game which had just terrible names for abilities. That made me realize that coming up with good, solid names is not as easy as it seems, and actually goes a long way to making your game shine.

Deeper Talent Trees and Specialization

Vasc of Crushridge writes:

It recently dawned upon me that the reason for the extinction of the hybrid are the extensions of the talent trees. In vanilla wow we had 51 talent points to spend, our trees went up to a 31 point talent. This means that we could "Spec" to anything and still have 20 points to put in another tree. This was a ratio of 31:20 or about 1.5:1. In BC we have 61 talent points and trees that go to 41, this means our ratio is now 41:20 or 2:1. In Wrath this will be even worse with 51 talent points and a ratio of 2.5:1 for anyone who wanted a 51 point talent.

So in vanilla, specing as a hybrid was perfectly viable, however in BC in order to be effective we must become an arch type, in Wrath this will become even more pronounced with people putting an even greater percentage of their talent points into one tree. One fix for this would be to not extend the trees at all, this would increase the number of points we could have in our "off-tree" and allow people to play as hybrids once again.

I think that Vasc is basically correct in a lot of respects, though deeper talent trees are not the sole reason for the extinction of hybrids. Time costs, increasing number of stats, and gear specialization play large factors as well.

As well, 31/30 specs would be pretty powerful, so Blizzard had to make the new top talents even more powerful. I shudder to think how crazy the 51-point talents will have to be in order to prevent people from going 41/30.

I too would prefer that Blizzard keep talent trees at 41 points. Maybe change, clean up, and add new talents lower down. I think it would also allow for a greater variety of builds. Right now I find that there's basically 1 build for each tree, and there was a lot more build variety in WoW 1.0.

I doubt Blizzard will do this though. Too many people would be upset if there weren't any crazy 51-point talents.

Karazhan Fatigue and the Zul'Aman Timer

There's been a lot of whining about badge loot from the raiding community lately, especially in light of the badge rewards coming in Patch 2.4. I don't really want to get dragged into a discussion of the larger issue of badge rewards, but I'd like to focus on one element that is has not really been discussed so far. In my opinion, a large part of the impulse behind the complaints comes from Karazhan fatigue.

Karazhan was the first raiding instance of TBC. It's the one we've been doing the longest. It's a good instance, but still, veni, vidi, vici. It's way past time to let Karazhan go. Yet it is the single best source of Badges of Justice in the game. One evening nets you about 22 Badges. And so we run Kara on our mains for Badges, we run Kara on our alts for Badges, and so a lot of us are pretty sick of running Karazhan.

Zul'Aman had potential as a replacement for Karazhan, but ZA is on a three-day timer. This means that the rewards from ZA are balanced around being about to do the instance twice in one week. ZA nets you 13 Badges for one evening of work. This means that you should always hit Karazhan for Badges first, and ZA is your second choice.

I've stated my opposition to short timers before, but that was mostly on scheduling concerns. But the distribution of loot is also a concern.

A newer, harder instance should be more attractive to players than the older instance. If you can clear ZA, you should choose to clear ZA over Karazhan. No 25-man chooses to farm Serpentshrine Cavern over the Black Temple.

Imagine if ZA was on a 7-day timer, and the loot was balanced appropriately. Now one evening would net you 26 badges. You'd get 2 higher quality epics per boss. And there would be a chance at a couple of Bear Mounts. If you could do ZA, you would choose to do it over Karazhan. It's harder, but it's also strictly better in terms of rewards.

The higher end raiders would most likely drop Karazhan completely, and move on to fresher content. Smaller guilds would have greater incentive to master ZA. In my opinion, putting a 3-day timer on ZA was a mistake. It has caused us to linger for too long in Karazhan, and the resulting Karazhan fatigue is an toxic element in the state of endgame.

Retribution Spec Thoughts

I've respecced Coriel to Retribution and have been farming ogres in Nagrand for Kurenai and Consortium reputation. Retribution is hilarious, and so much fun. I walk up to an ogre, and it falls over dead. Never gets old.

After playing Ret for a little bit, I'm coming to agree with the idea of only putting 1 point in Improved Judgement. This reduces Judgement to a 9 second cooldown (or 6 Global Cooldowns), which synchronizes well with the Crusader Strike cooldown (6 seconds or 4 GCDs). You essentially end up with the following DPS Cycle:


It's a very similar concept to the Fury Warrior practice of only putting 1 point in Improved Whirlwind and ending up with the same 6/4 GCD cycle with Whirlwind/Bloodthirst.

(As an aside, it's often easier to talk about DPS in terms of Global Cooldowns, rather than using seconds, and mentally converting.)

If you want to macro this for button mashing purposes, it is:

/castsequence Judgement, Seal of Command, Crusader Strike, Crusader Strike, Judgement, Seal of Command, Crusader Strike

Just remember that you need to lead off with an initial Seal.

In any case, I was also looking at Retribution builds, and I'm thinking about how to distribute the last few points. The base build is 5/8/44 with four points left over. At this point, there are three choices, as I see it: Blessing of Kings, 5/5 Improved Blessing of Might, or Pursuit of Justice.

Kings obviously ensures that your raid has Kings. Improved Might gives extra AP to your DPS. However, you don't have Improved Wisdom to go along with it, so I'm not sure how likely it is a raid will put you on Might/Wisdom duty. Pursuit of Justice makes you move significantly faster, and that always helps. Less time moving is more time doing damage, and less time taking damage from the fire.

So a question to the Retribution paladins out there: which of these three options do you prefer?

Leotheras, Randomness, and Resists

Leotheras the Blind in Serpentshrine Cavern is almost a perfect fight. Leo alternates between human and demon form, staying in each form for about a minute. As a human, he dual-wields and occasionally whirlwinds around the room, spinning towards random people. Leotheras wipes threat after the whirlwind and when he changes form.

In demon form, Leotheras casts an AoE Chaos Blast targeted on the person tanking him. Most guilds use a warlock in Fire Resist gear to tank him in this stage. Leotheras also summons Inner Demons for up to five members in the raid. You are the only person who can kill your Inner Demon, and if you fail to kill your Inner Demon in 30 seconds, you are Mind-Controlled for the rest of the fight.

This fight is--with one huge exception--a great deal of fun. Threat is wiped often, so DPS has a very stop and start aspect to it. It reminds me of the children's game Red Light, Green Light. As well, killing your Inner Demon is a thrill, especially for a healer. It's great fun to wear a bit of DPS gear, and be able to drop everything, and go medieval on some demon.

The big exception is Chaos Blast.

First, a bit of background on resists. There are two types of resists in WoW: partial resists; and binary resists. If a spell is pure damage, it is subject to partial resists. Basically, with partial resists your resistance works like armor, and prevents some of the damage on every cast. If you have 75% resistance (365 Resist) 75% of the damage from each cast is prevented.

However, if a spell has a non-damage component (like a Frostbolt's slowing effect), it is subject to binary resists. Here, resistance works more like Dodge, and you have a chance of either avoiding the attack completely, or taking full damage. If you have 75% resistance (365 Resist) you take no damage 75% of the time, and full damage 25% of the time.

Chaos Blast has a non-damage component, and thus is subject to binary resists. Specifically, each time you are hit with a Chaos Blast, you get a debuff which increases the amount of Fire damage you take.

So what happens is that the warlock takes no damage when she resists a Chaos Blast, but takes full damage when she fails to resist. Therefore damage is very spiky, and the spikes get larger and larger as debuffs accumulate. The big problem is that late in demon phase, if the warlock tank misses two resists in a row, she can take over 15K damage in slightly over 2s.

This is extremely hard to heal, especially as the warlock is taking zero damage 75% of the time. Cast-cancelling heals helps, but it's very common for the warlock to die. Guilds usually soulstone the warlock, and have druids ready to battle res.

By my calculations, during a demon phase there's about a 15% chance the warlock will take a double blast when she has 6 debuffs already on her. That's pretty much a guaranteed dead warlock for guilds at that level of content. That means across the entire fight, there's a 56% chance the warlock will be killed at least once during a demon phase.

This is terrible design for a raid fight. And quite frankly, it ruins what is pretty close to a perfect--and above all, fun--fight. This fight would be so much better if Chaos Blasts used partial resists instead of binary resists. I'm not really sure how the debuff would be applied, but I'm sure that a solution could be found.

In general, binary resists are a bad idea for damage-dealing spells. They make fights way too swingy. It would be much better if the damage component was separate from the debuff component. The damage component should always be handled by partial resists, and extra debuff components can be handled with binary resists (because a partial debuff often doesn't make sense, you either get the debuff or you don't).

Crossroads, Part II

I left my guild last night.

Don't really want to say much about it, except that the Guild Relations forum is right: If you are asking if you should leave your guild, the answer is always Yes. I ignored that advice, given to so many other posters, thinking that my situation was different. That was a mistake.

I'm not really sure what to do now. I could apply to another raiding guild. I could respec to Retribution and farm for my epic flying mount. I could wait for 2.4 and just do all the solo content. I could level an alt.

Ah well, maybe I'll use the free time to get caught up with posting.

Lich King Faction Speculation

Blizzard recently put up a page on the zone Dragonblight coming in Wrath of the Lich King. One sentence intrigued me, and so I'm going to indulge in some total speculation.

The one-time Scarlet Crusade, now the Scarlet Onslaught, has arrived as well in the hopes of claiming victory in their ongoing campaign against the Lich King and his minions.

What's interesting here is that Blizzard has renamed the Scarlet Crusade. Now why would they do that?

The immediate answer that jumps to mind is that Blizzard wants to separate out the reputation associated with each faction. This is similar to what was done with the Cenarion Circle and Cenarion Expedition. If the Scarlet Onslaught was the same faction as the Crusade, and you could get honored or exalted reputation with the Onslaught, that might screw up content in the old world.

If you couldn't get reputation with the Onslaught, there's really no reason to make them a different faction. As pure enemies, using the Scarlet Crusade would be better, as there is history between the players and the Crusade.

So I believe this points to the Scarlet Onslaught being a faction that you can gain reputation with. Which makes further sense as it is a faction opposed to the Lich King. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, after all.

But a lot of us are not going to be happy working with the Scarlet Onslaught. They've been the bad guys for so long that getting to revered or exalted just feels wrong, especially for us paladins.

So how to reconcile these two positions? Let's take a huge leap of logic, and state that the Onslaught makes the most sense as a faction you choose to join, like the Aldor or Scryer factions in Burning Crusade. And if the Onslaught are one choice, there must be a faction which is another choice.

There is one organization which would be the perfect foil to the Scarlet Onslaught: The Order of the Silver Hand, reforged by Tirion Fordring.

Two similar orders, both aimed at destroying the Lich King, but opposed to each other. It fits the Aldor/Scryer mold, as well as the content around the previous Naxxramas, where the Scarlet Crusade, Argent Dawn, and Brotherhood of Light worked together.

There are other possibilities, of course: a splinter faction from the Argent Dawn or Brotherhood of Light. But I like the Order of Silver Hand best.

So my predictions are:

1. The Scarlet Onslaught will be a faction that you can choose to join in Wrath of the Lich King.
2. The opposing faction will be the Order of the Silver Hand.
3. 90% of all paladins will join the Silver Hand.

Counting on Probability

Ninjasuperspy, in a comment to the post about Spell Crit and Mp5, posted:

I've always viewed Crit vs. MP5 as the difference between Avoidence versus Mitigation for tanking. Sure, crit will refund mana in big chunks just like parry or dodge will avoid 100% of an attack. However you cannot count on it. MP5 like Stamina or Armor is always on, dependable regen.

This is not quite right. The Avoidance versus Mitigation debate has had the side-effect of promoting some incorrect beliefs about probability. The reality is that:

You cannot count on probability in the short term.
You can count on probability in the long term.

The reason you can count on the long term is something called the Law of Large Numbers. It's the same principle that casinos and insurance rely on. The key here is determining what is long term, and what is short term.

Tanking heavy-hitting bosses is inherently short-term. For some bosses, as few as three or four hits in a row will kill the tank. When the number of events is that low, you cannot count on probability to keep you alive, and probabilistic or Avoidance stats like dodge rating are less useful than stamina or armor.

However, if it takes a larger number of hits to kill you, probability becomes more and more reliable. For example, I tank the murloc adds on Tidewalker. Each add doesn't hit very hard, but there are many of them. It would probably take 10-15 full hits to kill me. In this situation, Avoidance stats are actually very useful.

For mana regeneration on healing crits, you are considering a large number of spells over a 10 minute fight or so. That's upwards of 100 spells cast, which is definitely a long term issue. So you can count on Illumination to return a reasonable amount of mana.

On the other hand, because it only takes one or two spells to heal the tank up to full again, you cannot count on spell crit to increase the power of your heals. Yes, over the course of the entire fight your average heal will be higher, but relying on the next heal to crit is a bad idea.

See the difference? Mana regen over an entire fight is a long term issue, but returning a tank to full health after a big hit is a short term issue. Spell crit helps with the first part, but should not be counted on for the second part.

More on Warlocks and Weaknesses

Some of the comments to the previous post on Why People Hate Warlocks are getting way too specific.

People don't usually have emotional reactions to classes based on highly specific setups in PvE or PvP. They react to classes on a more general level. Take a step back, and look at the warlock from a higher vantage point.

Imagine a new Warcraft player making her first character. She asks you to tell you what the strengths and weaknesses of each class are. Are you going to tell her that warlocks can be melee-assist-trained down in Season 3 Arena? I rather doubt that.

If a new player asked me about paladins, I would say that a paladin's strengths were that they were hard to kill, could heal, and had great buffs. Their weaknesses are lower damage and almost zero ranged options.

What can you honestly say for warlocks? The only downside I can come up with that warlocks are fairly complex to play.* And while that's a downside for a new player, it is not a weakness for the class as a whole.

Again, I'm not saying that warlocks are too strong. Just that they lack obvious weaknesses, and that provokes an emotional response from the other classes who do have weaknesses.

*As an aside, that's one of the reasons I don't really like warlocks for high end PvE. All that marvelous complexity gets shafted in favour of spamming Shadow Bolts.

Ask Coriel: Spell Crit versus MP5

George writes:

I am a holy Paladin whose guild is progressing through SSC and The Eye. I have always strongly valued MP5 but I am starting to see that my recent and upcoming gear upgrades (T5) are itemized to include a lot more +spell crit rating and less MP5 than the gear that got me to this point. Would you care to share your thoughts and experiences on how valuable +spell crit rating is at my stage of the game and beyond?

Spell crit and mp5 basically do the same thing: make your spells cheaper. A paladin is usually always casting, so is always getting the benefit of spell crit. Mp5 has the added benefit of working all the time, and spell crit makes your spells slightly more powerful (on average).

Now which is better is a complex question. It depends a lot on the mix of spells you cast. The more expensive the spell, the more mana spell crit will return. I'm finding that as I move up in content, I'm casting more and more Holy Light(Rank 7). It us less efficient, but I need the extra healing. So the extra spell crit on the gear helps support that playstyle.

However, mp5 still helps, especially on fights where you aren't constantly casting. So in the end, you have to maintain a balance of +healing, mp5, and spell crit. My general philosophy is upgrade whenever possible, just go with what stats you get, and if you think you are getting too low in one stat, use gems to boost that stat up a bit. I use green +heal/+int (mana + spell crit) or purple +heal/+mp5 gems usually.

Also, when you start looking at spell haste gear, spell crit will work better with spell haste than mp5 will. This is because spell crit's effect depends on the number of spells you cast, while mp5 depends on straight time. With spell haste you cast more spells in a given time, so the amount of mana returned by spell crit increases, but the amount of mana returned by mp5 stays constant. So if you're planning on picking up any spell haste Badge, ZA, or crafted gear, I would start leaning towards spell crit more heavily.

Why People Hate Warlocks

V’Ming Chew at WoWInsider has a post up asking Why People Hate Warlocks. In the post, he identifies four possible reasons:

1. PvP Dominance?
2. Easy Mode?
3. Warlocks don't provide goodies?
4. Warlocks are evil?

While these reasons may contribute to the negative emotional responses to warlocks, I think they miss the mark. In my opinion the real reason warlocks are disliked is that:

Warlocks have no obvious weaknesses.

Class-based design requires classes to have specific weaknesses as well as strengths. That’s what allows classes to work together, to complement each other. In PvP, it’s what allows you to come up with a strategy to defeat the other class. Classes which have no weaknesses are just as broken as classes that have no strengths.

Let’s compare warlocks to the other DPS classes. Mages have several obvious weaknesses. They’re fragile. They rely heavily on mana and are very vulnerable when they run out. They have good crowd control, but Polymorph breaks on damage and even heals the target. Rogues are somewhat fragile and require melee range. Hunters require being at range. Getting into melee with a hunter is a good strategy.

So what are the warlock’s obvious weaknesses? They’re not fragile, you can’t run them out of mana, they’re good at range, they can Fear--or even Drain Tank--when people get too close. They can kill you slowly with DoTs, or they can blast you down with Shadowbolts.

I think that warlocks were originally designed to be a “control” class. Their weakness was they dealt damage slowly, but could control the fight until their opponent died. However, Shadowbolt allows a warlock to blast like a mage, while still retaining their original control. I think it’s telling that the major high end spec is 0/21/40 which spams Shadowbolts.

I think that Shadowbolt needs to be reigned in. I think that Blizzard should knock the coefficient down a few percent. Shadowbolt scales too well, and doesn’t really fit the whole “control” aspect of the warlock, negating their required weakness.

Ask Coriel: Retribution and Spell Damage

Rudolphe of Echo Isles writes in:

Something that concerns me is the removal of spell damage on the PTR from paladin gear to give room for stats more geared towards melee damage, however this seems to be a Nerf to Judgement of Command at the same time. Do you think they are going to adjust the ability to scale with attack power or give us alliance paladins seal of blood to make up for the loss in spell damage? I personally have about 44 spell damage on my gear because it doesn't seem worth it to work towards spell damage when attack power, hit and crit will increase my dps more since most ret abilities are based off of that.

The removal of spell damage is a nerf to Judgement of Command, but is a buff to the Ret paladin overall. Basically, if you look at where your total damage comes from, it looks roughly like:

50% - White auto-attack damage - scales with AP
20% - Crusader Strike - scales with AP
20% - Seal of Command - scales with AP and Spell Damage
10% - Judgement of Command - scales with Spell Damage

There's a saying in computer science, "Optimize the common case." For the ret paladin, 90% of her damage scales with AP, but only 30% scales with Spell Damage. So warrior-like gear that concentrates on AP is much better than Spell Damage gear.

Now should JoC be changed? From a logical point of view it probably should change to scale with AP. But you don't make changes to an ability in a vacuum. Ret Paladins are in a pretty decent position overall--even with JoC not scaling--so I think Blizzard will leave it alone for now.

Ask Coriel: 2.4 Spirit/Mana Regen Mechanics Changes

Syrien of Arathor writes:

I was wondering if you have any thoughts about the changes to spirit/mana regen in 2.4. and how/if this will impect holy paladins?

For those who don't know, in 2.4 the amount of mana regenerated by Spirit will scale with your Intellect. It's a general buff to mana regen for Spirit-using classes.

I don't think that the spirit change will directly affect paladins, as we don't stack Spirit. I have heard rumors of a paladin wearing Druid healing gear and using [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] to take advantage of the increased regen. Personally, I think such an idea is unlikely to really be effective, but you never know.

(Honestly, I expect Blizzard to nerf [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] at some point, as it is a trinket which scales with levels. It will be just as good at level 80 as it is at 70, and as it was at 60.)

Indirectly, it will make priests and druids stronger healers, and they won't need to pop mana potions as much. However, most raids prefer to take 3 paladins for the blessings. What I think we'll see is more guilds dropping from 3 Paladin healers to 1 Ret Paladin, 1-2 Holy Paladins, and 0-1 Prot Paladins. Retribution is in a really good place at the moment, and an AoE tank is pretty useful. But the raid doesn't really benefit from having a second Ret pally (or a second Prot paladin), so there will still be a need for Holy Paladins.

I don't think the number of paladins taken to raids will change, but I do think that this change will give us more freedom to take on different roles other than just healers. And quite frankly, that's a good thing in my opinion. 90% of us healing was unhealthy.

Ask Coriel: Enchanting Scrolls

Jordrah of Ravencrest writes:

I was wondering what your opinion on the Enchantment "scrolls" that Blizzard has put up on the Arena Tournament PTR. If these were implemented on the Live servers (as of now they are only available on the Arena Tournament PTR).

How do you think they would affect the AH economy as well as raiding and PvP? Would enchanters be pleased or angry about such a change? Should there only be certain enchantments available as scrolls: only low level enchantments as a way to get rid of low level mats there might be laying around; should high level enchants such as Mongoose and Executioner only be available through an actual enchanter and still require the interaction? Also, what about these scrolls be use ala Mithril Spurs and Counter-Weight style where you are free to craft them and sell them but it is a requirement to find a crafter to apply them to your gear?

Jeez that was a lot, but I still have more! Ha ha.

Another thing that the enchanting scrolls and the recent change to Primal Nethers and Vortexes made me think about was: what if enchanters were to get their own BoP reagent needed for certain high level enchants (Mongoose and Executioner-like enchants from WotLK). Let's call it a Primal Shard or Nether Crystal (I know kind of lame). I was thinking that instead of being a drop like Primal Nethers and Vortexes are, they would be available through disenchanting. Something like a 10% chance upon disenchanting Rare items and a 50% chance upon disenchanting Epic items. I figured a change such as this would allow enchanters to have something that lets them charge for enchants beyond just a tip (which can be woefully low from some people) yet a relatively high chance to get them from disenchanting would keep them at a level where they would be somewhat valuable yet not overpriced. Another way for them to be gained could also be another enchanting recipe that would turn several Void Crystals or Large Prismatic Shards into a Nether Crystal.

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Before I answer the question, let me tell a story about selling enchants.

Back in pre-TBC days, Fiery was a very popular weapon enchant, and it required 4 Small Radiant Shards. One day, I was in Ironforge and an enchanter (we'll call him Tim), started hawking Fiery in Trade Chat.

Tim: Levelling up Enchanting. Will pay you 1 gold to enchant Fiery if you provide mats.

Amused, I checked the Auction House. Sure enough, all the Small Radiant Shards were up for double the normal buyout, all being sold by Tim.

I sent Tim a tell congratulating him on his scheme, and he confirmed that he had several sales that day, making a healthy profit.

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Anyways, one of the big problems with Enchanting is that you can't enchant gear for your alts. Scrolls solve that problem nicely, and is one reason I don't expect scrolls to require an enchanter to use. So I don't think the mithril spurs model is a good idea.

The interaction on the economy will be interesting. I don't think enchanters need a BoP mat, because the supply of materials is controlled *entirely* by enchanters. It's like jewelcrafting, but even more extreme. It really depends on how many enchanters continue to sell materials versus the number of enchanters who switch to selling enchants.

Part of the problem is that is very hard to justify a crafting fee when the buyer provides the materials. So the harder it is for the buyer to get materials, the higher the premium the finished product can command. Theoretically, enchanting would be very lucrative if the enchanter provided materials, because the number of capable enchanters available at any one time is low, but in practice everyone buys the materials first, then finds an enchanter and tips them a gold or two.

So my predictions are, if enchanting moves to the scrolls:

1. Supply of enchanting mats dries up. Enchanters will keep their mats and produce enchants for sale, much the same way that jewelcrafters keep raw gems and sell finished gems.
2. Price of enchants increases.
3. However, it will be much easier to find and purchase the enchant you want using the AH.

More convenience for everyone, but higher prices for everyone as well.

Weapon Types

Andres writes:

The last thing is a strange idea I've been having for a while. The most problematic gear from Arena/PvP is the weapons, since most of them have their stats better allocated than their PvE counterparts. What's worst is the lack of variety in PvE weapons, forcing some to spec out of their beloved specs because there isn't one at their current raiding level.

Although Blizzard stole some of the thunder (via weapons available now via BoJ), I was thinking of some kind of quest like T0.5 (bear with me, I ding 60 a week after BC). The players would gather items from the raid instance to be handed to the associated faction. After a number of items are handed, the player would receive a weapon that doesn't drop from the instance (for example, off-hand swords for TK).

It is an interesting idea, but I think it’s a bit of a Band-Aid fix that doesn’t address the real underlying problem. The bigger problem is that rogues, warriors, feral druids and healing paladins are too specialized when it comes to weapon types.

This doesn’t really matter in PvP, because you get to choose your weapon type, but in PvE you have to rely on drops from bosses. (You could completely change how PvE loot is distributed, but that is beyond the scope of this post.)

Rogues have it worse off. There are four main weapons for rogues: Daggers, Swords, Fists, and Maces. Each of these types works best when you are using two weapons of the same type, and each hand usually has specific desired characteristics. But this makes it harder to gear up, as a Sword rogue has to wait for a sword to drop.

I think that it would be beneficial if rogue weapon specializations were combined. Combine the Dagger and Fist Specialization talents and allow Ambush/Mutilate/Backstab to be used with both Daggers and Fist weapons. Then combine Sword and Mace Specializations together (probably would have to only use the Sword spec ability). This would give each type of rogue more options when it comes to gearing up. A Dagger rogue could replace a Dagger with a Fist weapon and still play effectively.

You could do something similar with Warrior weapon specializations. Make the type of weapon matter a bit less in order to make it easier to gear up.

Feral druids really need a way to utilize normal weapons a bit more. Right now they rely on special druid staves. But the downside is that they can’t use normal weapons, and other classes can’t use their staves. Of course, feral druids have a problem in that they don’t share off-hand or 2H Weapon types with the other melee DPS (aside from 2H Maces).

The problem with healing paladins is that 1H Maces is the only weapon type that paladins used to have in common with the other healers. The other three healing classes share Staves and Daggers, which is why you occasionally see a healing Staff or a healing Dagger. However, with the recent change to allow all Shamans to use 2H Maces and Axes, I have high hopes that we will see some healing 2H Maces. 2H Maces would be a weapon type that could be used by three out of four healing classes (paladin, druid, and shaman).

In any case, my point is that making weapon types matter a lot hurts PvE, because of the way loot is distributed (random, specific drops). You either need to reduce the impact of weapon type, or move to a more “tokenized” model.

Ask Coriel: Tanking as Holy

Ron writes:

Just starting to run Kara as a Holy Pally. I noticed your Armory snapshot today has you in tanking gear so I thought i would ask how u find the challenge of holding aggro and pulling mobs with so few points in Prot please?

I am keen to gather an off tank set but wondered what runs u have comfortably tanked as Holy spec with your tanking gear? Heroics, non-Heroics, etc.

I don't really tank much. I mainly tank adds that need to AoE'd down. That's pretty much murlocs on Tidewalker these days. I pull mainly with healing threat on a Life-tapping warlock. For out-of-combat pulls, I have Holy Shock.

As long as you have Improved Righteous Fury, holding aggro is not usually an issue. A full Prot paladin would find it easier, but Holy has cheaper Consecrations, Holy Shock, and extra spell damage.

The big difference comes in mitigation. A Prot paladin would take much less damage than I do. In fact, I *cannot* tank 73+ mobs or raid bosses as I would take crushing blows for 150% damage. You need Holy Shield to be able to tank raid bosses.

As for 5-mans, I can tank regular 5-mans fairly easily (my gear is pretty good). I can probably tank heroics as well, but I haven't really tried.

One thing that I have been trying lately is gearing for Avoidance. For example, I'm trying +8 Dodge, +8 Defense, +4 Defense/+6 Stamina gems, instead of the more standard +12 Stamina everywhere style of Effective Health tanking. EH tanking is really good for slow, hard-hitting bosses, as Avoidance tanking relies on randomness, and it only takes a small streak of full hits to kill you on a slow-hitting boss.

However, for AoE tanking, you tend to deal with lots of small attacks, and the Law of Large Numbers starts to kick in. This means that the odds of taking a killing streak are very low. Plus, paladins are pushed towards Avoidance because we have to gear that way to reach uncrushable status. I'm just keeping on going in that direction.

So far it seems to be working out. I think I do take less damage overall than in my previous setup. I'm not sure if it would be viable when tanking bosses, but as I am Holy, the point is moot.

Ask Coriel: PvP Gear from PvE

Andres writes in:

I wanted to know your opinion on PvP gear available from PvE Raids. I know we don't see exactly eye to eye on the PvP gear, but the latest changes are a turn on from the interesting to the bizarre.

1) The blue gear available via rep is a great step forward to balance the 0-200 resilience race, helping both recent 70s and raiders switching to focus PvP.

2) The T4/T5/T6 tokens will now allow to pick up PvP gear. This change does seems strange. I'm still trying to decide if it's a good change or not. I'm leaning on the not-good side as only particular pieces are better than their raiding counterparts and it gives raiders the edge on the other side of the fence, which is the argument against PvP gear availability. ;-)

I think Blizzard is trying to make it easier for people to participate in both PvP and PvE. Currently, gearing up for either takes a lot of time, and if you really want to do both, you have to spend twice the time.

Since the introduction of S1 gear from battlegrounds, you can use PvP gear in PvE. It's not the best stuff, but sheer ilevel allows it to be decent. S1 isn’t as good as T4, but it’s better than a lot of blue gear.

These moves just allow people to go the other way. If you spend time running 5-mans, you can get some initial resilience gear. It’s not as good as running battlegrounds for S1, but it’s better than nothing.

Similarly, for the high-end people (Raiding or Arenas), S3 isn’t as good as T6 for raiding and extra T5/T6 tokens turn into S2, not S3. You get gear so you can participate, but are a step behind the people who choose PvE or PvP as their main activity. As well, extra tokens can get turned into gear, instead of being wasted.

It should also help out hybrid classes, as it will make it easier to pick up some PvP off-spec gear. The only specs which will need a little extra help are Protection warriors and Protection paladins, as there really isn’t any PvP gear or playstyle that is suitable for them.

All in all, it’s a pretty good move by Blizzard to get more people involved in both facets of the game.

Bind-on-Equip Nethers and Vortexes

Possibly the most interesting change to come out of Patch 2.4 is the news that Primal Nethers and Nether Vortexes will change from Bind-on-Pickup to Bind-on-Equip.

A while back, I noted that Nethers were Bind-on-Pickup in order to create scarcity, in an attempt to allow crafters to actually make a profit from crafting weapons or armor. A person wanting a specific item needed to find crafter with the recipe and an available vortex. As far as I could tell, it seemed to work. A Primal Nether went for about 100g, and a Vortex went for 500-700g on Skywall.

However, once Patch 2.4 hits, the crafter and vortex become separate items, making it easier to find them and driving down the price. The price of crafting an item will once again be driven back down to “mats + tip”.

I wonder what motivated Blizzard to change the system. Did the original system not work out? Did too many people skip getting crafted items because of the hassle? Did more casual crafters find it too hard to get Nethers for their own personal armor? Is the availability of Badge Gear having a negative effect on crafted gear? Is Blizzard clearing the decks for the next expansion?

It’s an issue that really has no right answer. Enforced scarcity is an inconvenience to the rest of us. Handling Vortexes is huge pain in my guild. We have to distribute them properly at the moment they drop. With all previous raid materials, we just collected them and put them in a guild bank, and people could withdraw what they needed. But enforced scarcity is also the only way to raise prices for crafters, to allow them to get paid for creating items for other people.

Of all the changes in 2.4, this is the one that I would love to get some insight about from Blizzard, to find out exactly which of the many reasons for or against this change came into play.

Fast Loot System

Lately I've been thinking about a raid just using Blizzard's built-in loot system. Set a threshold of Epic and just go:

1. Want the item for your main set - roll Need.
2. Want the item for your off-set or sidegrade - roll Greed.
3. Don't want the item - Pass.
4. If everyone passes, an enchanter scoops it up and disenchants the epic.

I know this system would probably end in drama and tears, but it would be so fast and easy. You could spend more time actually doing stuff, and less time handing out loot. Yeah, someone might win two items over someone else, but it will average out over time.

The biggest issue would be people who raided for different amounts of time. A guild would have to deal with attendance issues apart from the loot system. But that might be a good idea anyways, rather than relying on your loot system to motivate people to show up.

Recap

Things are getting a little confused over the last few posts, so I thought I'd state my positions on raid content clearly:

1. Attunements are unnecessary, and should be removed for every instance except Karazhan.

2. Reward bosses should be buried deep in the heart of an instance, not placed near the beginning.

3. Guilds should do raid content in order, and not chase after "easy" bosses.

4. If you have a choice between putting in attempts on a new boss or farming for extra gear, you should put in more attempts on the new boss.

5. Trash should not respawn.

Hopefully that makes things clearer.

The Fallacy of Gear

Dorgol of Boulderfist posts a comment in the previous thread:

Removing attunements will HELP the guilds currently working on SSC / TK by allowing them access to T6 loot.

No, in my opinion, it won't. This is because gear is relatively unimportant in raiding in TBC. The natural progression of raiding prepares the guild gear-wise for the boss they are working on. By the time a raid reaches a given boss, the raid will have enough gear to tackle the boss. The only guilds who are undergeared for the content they are working on are Nihilium and the other Top 50 guilds. That's because they go through content at such a fast pace.

The rest of us are appropriately geared--or even overgeared--for the content we are working on. (Note that I'm talking on a raid level. It's possible to have a few new people who are individually undergeared.)

There are four elements to defeating boss fights. From most important to least important, they are:

1. Strategy
2. Execution
3. Skill
4. Gear

Gear, though necessary, is the least important of these. In my experience, every time my guild has had issues on a fight in TBC, it has been because of one of the top 3 reasons, never gear.

Unfortunately, most lower level raiders do not believe this, or at best pay lip service to it. Tobold called Gruul a gear check. Gruul is in no way, shape, or form, a gear check. The DPS requirements to kill Gruul are easily in reach of a blue-geared character who knows how to play her class.

I have been through the learning process for Gruul with two different guilds (Valarin was drafted to fill out a raid). With Coriel, our first problem was being killed by Shatters, which we fixed by using the safe spots (Strategy error). The second problem involved too low DPS, and that was fixed by focusing on hit rating and proper rotations (Skill error). With Valarin, the main issue was that healers were letting the tank die at about Growth 12 (Execution error). Note that none of these errors had anything to do with gear.

But gear is the only variable that Blizzard controls, without nerfing the fight directly. Blizzard cannot improve our strategy, execution, or skill. So they add in more gear, hoping to compensate for the lack of the other three elements.

You need to spend time on boss fights, improving your strategy, execution and skill. That will serve your guild far better than attempting to gear up for the fight. In many ways, I think that skipping Kael/Vashj for early T6 content is a distraction that will end up hurting T5 guilds, just as skipping Magtheridon for Void Reaver did.

Hard fights teach the strategy, execution, and skill required for even harder fights. Skipping a hard fight in favor of an easy fight does your guild no favors.

If you don't believe me, consider this quote from Ciderhelm's Time Management for Raiding Guilds (a superb article which completely changed a lot of my views on raiding):

What players do not understand is how real a factor time is on the guild welfare as well as their own. Spending time gearing up for new content is almost never as well spent as time actually working on that content. This is especially true in the Burning Crusade, where stat differences and gear progression between Karazhan and Black Temple is relatively small; keep in mind that Nihilum cleared through Black Temple just 3 months after raiding began. Gear is good, but it is not key. [Emphasis mine]

Attunements and Reward Bosses

Patch 2.4 is removing the attunements to Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple. If you look at the WoW Dungeons and Raid forums, you'll see a lot of angst over this decision. First off, I fully support removing the attunements. In general, I think raid attunements beyond the first level are pointless and end up hurting the slower, less hardcore guilds.

However, the raiders complaining about the attunement removal do have a point, and it's worth considering their perspective. In my view, the issue is not really the attunements themselves, but rather the nature of the bosses right after the attunement.

Remember that for raiders, quality of reward needs to match the challenge overcome. However, it is generally accepted that the first few bosses of T6 content are "easy" and really are not worthy of the quality of loot that they drop. But this is acceptable because Kael and Vashj are so difficult. Early T6 bosses do not just reward you for beating the T6 boss, they also reward you for killing Kael/Vashj.

Essentially, the first few T6 bosses are "reward bosses". There are other reward bosses in the game: Void Reaver in Tempest Keep, the Chess event in Karazhan, the drakes in Blackwing Lair.

But with the attunement removal, you don't need to kill Kael/Vashj, so the challenge ceases to match the reward, and thus there's a lot of complaining. People are allowed to skip the hard content and access the easy bosses with over-generous rewards.

This happens on a lesser level with Void Reaver in Tempest Keep. Originally, you had to beat Magtheridon to get access to Void Reaver, and thus Void Reaver was essentially an extra reward for beating Magtheridon. But now you can go straight to Void Reaver, making his reward (T5 shoulders) greater than his challenge.

Another way to think about it is to look at the Chess event in Karazhan. There is no question that the Chess rewards seriously outstrip the challenge of that event. However, those epics are not just a reward for Chess, they're also a reward for getting that deep into Karazhan. If the Chess event came at the beginning of the instance, or after Attumen the Huntsman, it would make no sense. The reward would be disproportionate to the challenge on every level.

If the first boss in T6 content was the equivalent difficulty step of Razorgore in Blackwing Lair, there would be no complaints about removing attunements. Challenge would match reward, and everything would be fine with the world.

In general, I think that "reward bosses" are a bad idea. They encourage guilds to take shortcuts, to waste time and skip over content that would teach them necessary skills. I honestly believe that having guilds skip Magtheridon to go for Void Reaver has hurt them in the long run. Magtheridon teaches coordination skills that are very valuable in later T5 content.

Reward bosses are an especially bad idea to have near the beginning of an instance. If you have to have a reward boss, it is best to follow the Karazhan model, and drop it deep in the heart of the instance.

The Road To Damascus

January 10, 2008:

Retribution is currently terrible in every aspect of the game, even with the best gear currently available.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath (Yes, that Death & Taxes)

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11:04 AM, January 15, 2008:

Retribution Paladins do not have comparable DPS to Shadow Priests. I do not understand where this comes from, as I have never seen a WWS of a major fight with Paladins anywhere near respectable DPS margins.
...
Death and Taxes would use Retribution Paladins if they were good. There's no spite or hatred of the class preventing them from doing so. They simply don't work. If they did, they would be used; it's that simply. Top tier guilds have to take advantage of everything available to them. It would be hindering progression to do otherwise. Unfortunately, at this time, the spec is sub par.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

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10:26 PM, January 15, 2008:

I just went Ret in 3s, and I took top 10 undefeated.
...
You seem to be really gun-ho on Paladins as a hybrid, and, for the first time in a long while I actually feel like one, rather than a healer / cleanser.

I never really considered Ret as a viable spec until today. I always compared Ret Paladins to other melee classes, and in that regard they fall short. No interrupt, no snare, no healing debuff etc. etc. I'm sure you've heard it all before. After a few games however, I can see how Paladins can still play support as Ret, and the things that make Holy so strong are still there.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

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Febuary 5, 2008:

By the way, I started Raiding as Ret, it's completely viable.

- Azreal, 70 Paladin, Death & Taxes, Korgath

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All teasing aside, this is great to see. Perhaps it will convince more guilds to give a Retribution paladin a trial. For better or worse, the high end guilds do hold a lot of sway in the raiding community, and D&T are among the very top.

I feel like posting a thread to the paladin forums. I'm pretty sure I could get a 10-page flame-war going.