Ask Coriel: Prot/Ret Viability

Kevin writes:

Iv been thinking about this type of hybrid for a very long time, one that stacked shield block and anything with a high amount of strength. As a prot pally who isn't trading avoidance for block (yet) I can hit pretty hard with Shield of Righteousnouss. The person in the following video is using the ideal gear, but he is full Prot.



see that 13k crit at the end? take that value and multiply it by 9% from Vengence, 3% from Sanctified Retribution, 3% from Crusade (6% in most PvP/PvE situations) as well as a 20% stat reduction on theh enemy and you pretty much have a 1 shot spell. Of course this damage would be reduced by a high amount of resil, as well as other spells, but this is still a really high value. It might even be considered a decent PvE spec by some (off tank/dps). Now that dual spec is out however, it pretty much eliminated all hybrid specs, because they are not needed any more. Personally, I enjoyed playing hybrid specs because of the different style of play they offered. This is one of the few specs that I havn't seen, but I am eager to try when I get the correct gear. Any thoughts on if this hybrid would be accepted into PvE? I estimate you could push around 3-4k dps in the right gear.

I'm not seeing how your PvE DPS would be so high. You're missing a basic attack in Hammer of the Righteous. Yes, you would get very high Shield of Righteousness hits, but I don't think it can make up for missing an entire attack.

I'm looking at one of my Prot Pally tank's WWS. HotR contributes 17% of his damage, and SoR contributes 21%. You'd need to almost double the possible SoR damage to make up for the loss of HotR, and I don't think the few extra points in Ret will do that for you.

Personally, I'm not sure that this would work. An extra button to press--to fill up empty space in the rotation is huge--and is a much bigger advantage than extra damage talents. This concept might be fine in PvP, where burst is very important, but it won't be good for sustained PvE DPS and threat.

Shroud Loot System

Runycat, from Unbearably HoT, has an interesting overview of her guild's loot system: Shroud Loot System. I haven't looked at a loot system in a while, and Shroud has some interesting properties that are worth examining in detail.

This is a quick overview, so I'm going to ignore off-spec loot for simplicity's sake.

Description

Shroud is a loosely-coupled DKP system. Earning DKP is pretty standard. Points are awarded for whatever the guild thinks is appropriate. Runycat's guild primarily awards points for Time Spent Raiding, but you could easily award points for Boss Kills or whatever other metric you deem appropriate.

Spending DKP is where the system gets interesting. When an item is up for distribution, a raider may choose to "shroud". Of the raiders who shroud, the one with the highest DKP gets the item and loses half her DKP. If no raiders choose to shroud, interested raiders can roll for the item. The raider with the highest roll gets the item and pays a standard fixed minimum fee.

Here's a quick example: Coriel has 500 DKP and Kent has 600 DKP. If an item drops and both raiders shroud, Kent would win and pay 300 DKP. If only Coriel shrouds, she wins the item and pays 250 DKP. If neither raider shrouds, both /random. Coriel rolls a 84 and Kent rolls 22. Coriel wins and pays 10 DKP for the item. If Kent had rolled higher, he would have paid 10 DKP for the item.

Main Insight

The main insight of Shroud is that there are three values of loot:

1. Sexy loot - this is loot that is greatly desired. For example, Tier sets and Best-in-Slot weapons.


2. Everyday upgrades - these are items which are upgrades, but which a raider doesn't get excited about. She''ll take it to keep it from being disenchanted, but isn't really going to care if another raider gets it instead. The majority of loot in the instance falls into this category.


3. Unwanted items - these are items the raider doesn't want at all.

Is this valuation correct? My experiences lead me to believe that it is correct. My guild runs a pure English Bid Auction system. This is the system used by traditional auctions with multiple rounds of bidding and a fast-speaking auctioneer. Not the fastest system in the world, but items end up being sold at their true value at that point in time. What I've noticed is that loot either goes for hundreds of points or it goes for near-minimum. There's not a lot of in-between. As well, it's very few pieces--primarily Tier sets, BiS weapons, and amazing trinkets--that have the sky-high prices.

Shroud handles each of these categories of loot in a different fashion. Sexy loot is distributed in strict accordance with the point system. The person who wins that loot has the most points, end of story. Meanwhile, everyday upgrades are distributed randomly, with minimum points spent.

Advantages

Shroud has all the advantages of a traditional DKP system when it comes to the highly-prized loot. You won't get the case where someone who raids a couple days a month beats a 100% attendance raider on a Best-in-Slot weapon. That type of situation is what causes high-attendance raiders to seek out a new guild.

However, raiders of all attendance levels have equal shot at the everyday loot, which comprise the majority of the epics in an instance. This gives your more casual members a good shot at getting some loot, rather than having all of it monopolized by the high-attendance raiders.

Shroud also avoids the disadvantages of a system like Spend-All DKP or Suicide Kings in that a raider can still obtain smaller upgrades while saving for a prized item. Loot that can be used should never end up sharded with this system.

Shroud also allows raiders to determine what loot is really valuable and what is not. The choice to shroud or not remains with the raider, not the officers.

Finally, since shrouding costs 50% of your DKP, hoarding of points is discouraged and people are brought back to the rest of the group fairly quickly. There are no worries about inflation in this system.

Disadvantages

The biggest disadvantage is that the system is complex and that makes handing out loot more time-consuming. You first have to see if anyone wants to shroud. If no one does, then everyone who wants the item must roll, and you need to see who has the highest roll. The amount of complexity is probably unnecessary for a guild where the raiders have similar attendance patterns. A single-bid or fixed-cost DKP system would probably be faster and just as accurate.

The complexity increases even further when you consider off-spec loot. Should you let someone shroud on off-spec loot? Maybe, maybe not. Even without that, off-spec loot would add another round of waiting to the process.

Shroud also has the overhead and record-keeping of all DKP systems, as you have to track points as they are earned and spent.

The final disadvantage that I can see is that a raider might attempt to game the system, choosing not to shroud and betting that no one else wants to roll on the item. Then she gets upset when someone with much lower DKP wins the roll over her. While it is her fault for not shrouding, drama is rarely rational. Indeed, sometimes people get more upset when they are the ones at fault.

Conclusion

Shroud is a decent loot system for a guild with a core of high-attendance raiders filled out with a number of more casual players. It gives both types of players a shot at rewards, ensuring that neither side is treated unfairly. It avoids several pitfalls of other systems--like Suicide Kings, Pure Random, or Pure DKP--that are traditionally used by this segment of guilds.

However, the price that is paid is increased complexity. And you have to wonder if this complexity is really necessary. Shroud is really close to Pure Random, and Pure Random is so much easier to deal with. The real question a guild should ask is how likely is the situation where a low-attendance raider beats a high-attendance raider? How much will the guild care if that happens?

If the guild can handle that situation happening without drama, I think Shroud becomes unnecessary, and Pure Random becomes the system of choice. But not many guilds can actually handle that. And for a more casual guild, losing a raider who is part of the backbone of your raid team can be much more devastating to your ability to raid than losing someone is for a traditional raiding guild.

Yogg-Saron

We finally got Yogg-Saron down on Wednesday this week. It's a really nice fight. It's all about directing the right amount of DPS at the right targets at the right time. It's odd, but it took us a fairly long time, at least compared to the rest of the instance, much to the dismay of our raid leader.

We were having a lot of problems with phase 1, but on Wednesday it just clicked and we nailed Phase 1 perfectly on every attempt. After that, it was just a matter of deciding how much DPS went towards adds and how much went towards Yogg-Saron. I think part of our success may have been that we took two 10-man groups through Ulduar-10 last weekend, and both groups beat Yogg, thus helping us understand the fight in its entirety.

Ah well, now to work on Hard Modes.

A Side-Effect of Easy Tanking

It occurred to me that Ulduar has managed a feat that I have long wanted in raid fights: mechanics that make the ranged DPS run all over the place, while ignoring the healers. And it's all due to the Wrath changes that made tanking much easier.

In Wrath, it's a lot easier for tanks to generate threat. This has made tanking 5-man instances much easier. Not everyone is happy with this development, citing that 5-mans have become about AoEing everything down, but I think that in general it's made it easier and more fun for tanks and less skilled players.

Because of the easier threat generation, the tanks have a large lead in threat over the dps. In Ulduar, this has allowed many fights to use "Runes of Power". These are area effects where anyone inside gets a boost to their damage. As Runes of Power appear and disappear on the map, the ranged DPS has to run from one Rune to another. In TBC and 1.0, these mechanics might not have been as useful, as DPS were more likely to push threat and steal aggro.

These Runes generally do nothing for healers, so healers are free to ignore them. But DPS has to keep them very much in mind if they want to do maximum damage.

Of course, there's a limit to how much you can do with Runes of Power, as you can't make them too important without leaving melee behind. Still, it's a pretty clever mechanic that takes advantage of the greater threat generation in order to make a more interesting fight, while sparing the healers.

Regenerating Mana and Healing

Ghostcrawler has mentioned several times that Blizzard is trying to constrain mana regeneration for healers, in order to encourage healers to heal more efficiently and more thoughtfully. For the most part, Blizzard has failed in this task. The 3.1 changes haven't really had much effect on mana concerns.

There is one fight in Ulduar where mana conservation becomes vital: General Vezax.

Vezax has an ability called Aura of Despair which shuts down pretty much all mana regeneration for casters. No Illumination, no mp5, no spirit, no Replenishment, etc. The only way casters can regenerate mana is by standing in pools of saronite vapour every so often. However, the vapour damages you as it returns mana. Hard-mode for Vezax involves not using the vapour at all.

In our first attempt on Vezax, I tried using the vapour, but managed to kill myself while only regenerating 600 mana. I'm still not 100% sure what happened there, but I chose to ignore the vapour for the remaining attempts.

Vezax was the most fun I've had healing in a long time. It's so good to watch overhealing once again, to heal carefully, to predict damage and use cooldowns appropriately, rather than spam madly. Almost all the raid damage in the Vezax encounter is avoidable.

But the lengths the fight had to go to create that dynamic. No regeneration at all. Entire stats and talents become useless. Blizzard's tiptoeing around for the rest of game, cutting the effect of spirit by a few percent, or nerfing Illumination, none of that had the effect of simply saying, "No Regen."

I still think that mana is the best resource for healing. I've played games that use an energy-like system and--while energy is great for DPS--it just isn't as good as the gameplay involved in healing while keeping a careful eye on a dwindling mana bar.

It's too late for WoW, but I think that future MMOs based around the tank-healer-dps trinity would be well-served by taking a cue from General Vezax and simply not allowing healers to regenerate mana in combat. Give them talents that add extra effects, or do new things, but close the door on regeneration permanently. It seems to be the only way to prevent healing from falling into the mindless spam routine.

The New Immortal

I posted before about the Immortal Achievement. I did like the idea of Immortal, and have great respect for those who got it, but in practice it was too stressful and just wasn't fun.

So what of the new Immortal: Conqueror of Ulduar?

It definitely isn't as impressive a feat as the old Immortal. But I think that in practice, it's going to be a lot closer to my ideal of "a side-effect of playing perfectly, rather than a goal that is worked towards in and of itself."

Last night was a rather mediocre raid night with a lot of wipes on Mimiron. But we did pick up a flawless Ignis and a flawless Freya¹, marking the first two fights for the Achievement. It wasn't something we were explicitly trying for, but it was just a great bonus for doing the fight well. As well, it's only week three or so, so that hopefully gives us a long time to work towards the entire Achievement.

We don't have to play 100% perfectly for the entire instance, but this Achievement rewards striving for perfection, even if you only reach those heights occasionally. At this point, I'm really happy with the new version of Immortal.

¹ Technically, Freya wasn't flawless. Several people got too eager and managed to blow themselves up after Freya was defeated. But it still counted for the Achievement.

Using Games To Teach About Social Problems

Raph Koster linked to an interesting article about Brenda Brathwaite's attempt to create games that illustrate issues such as slavery and the Holocaust.

It is an interesting read, but I find myself wondering just how successful these games really are. There are two issues I see: the rules often emphasize the wrong aspects, and thus can be subverted; and the fact that games are often isomorphic to other games.

For the first issue, about emphasizing the wrong aspect, consider the description of the initial slavery games:

Brathwaite assembled a collection of tiny wooden figures, then had her daughter group them into "families." After her daughter was finished, she picked them up by the handful and placed them on a makeshift boat. Her daughter was confused: Why would she take the parents but leave the baby? Why wouldn't brothers stay with their sisters? "No one wants to go," Brathwaite explained. That's when it started to click.

Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip's halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her "cargo" wouldn't make it. It wasn't a "fun" game by any means, but it served a different purpose: It helped her daughter intuitively understand the emotional experience of the slave trade, a lesson that numbers on a chalkboard couldn't provide.

In the first example, what if the player made a conscious attempt to keep families together? Doing that defeats the moral lesson that you are trying to teach. Or in the second, suppose the player figured out the right balance between slaves and food stores such that she could keep the "cargo" alive till the end of the journey? Is that winning? Or would it teach that slavery is okay if you take proper care of the slaves?

If you change the rules of the game such that it is impossible to survive the trip, does that show that slavery is evil, or does it really show that you rigged the game to ensure the "right" outcome?

The rules of a game can simulate many things. However, I'm not sure they can get across fundamental moral points like the idea that it is wrong for one human to own another.

The second concern is that game rules can be thought of as just problems that can be solved. Such problems are often isomorphic to different problems. That means the underlying rules, constraints, and solutions are the same, but the context is what determines the morality.

For example, consider the game Train described in the article:

The object of Train is to get a collection of people from Point A to Point B by placing them in a boxcar and sending them on their merry way. Played among a group of three people, players draw cards from a pile that can impede other players or free them from existing obstacles. The first player to reach the end of the line wins.

The destination? Auschwitz.

Now, the article doesn't really expand on this, but the underlying problem is a logistics problem like the ones faced by airline, trucking and other transportation companies every day. The shock comes from the context: that the people being transported are Jews and the destination is a death camp. The context is very important, but I don't see what the *game* part actually adds.

Or let's look at the second slavery example again:

Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip's halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her "cargo" wouldn't make it.

Let's change the context. Instead of slaves, let's say the boat contains refugees fleeing a city that is being destroyed. As they cross the ocean, they realize that they don't have enough food for everyone to survive. Now the lesson the game teaches is about hard choices, and maybe even about the nobility of sacrifice. It's diametrically opposite from the evil of slavery, but the underlying game mechanics are identical in both cases.

The context, or the "fluff", determines morality, not the game rules. But if you're using a game to teach the moral concept, and someone sees through the game to the underlying isomorphism, that weakens the lesson. It makes it easier to declare the two situations equal, to justify actions taken.

Games are problems where you need to find a solution while being bound by rules and constraints. These rules and constraints are the most important parts, more important than the context that surrounds them. As such, games are a poor medium for conveying lessons about morality and social problems. Rather than focusing on the moral issue, the game becomes about trying to achieve an acceptable outcome by outwitting the rules.

Rhaina On Crutches

In this thread about dual-spec, one poster makes the common claim that certain mechanics are "crutches" which weaken guilds who use them. Rhaina posts a beautiful response that struck me as being so perfectly right that I took the liberty of reposting it here:

If you lack one leg, a a pair of crutches is an indispensable possession that allows you to move about in the world.

If you have two perfectly good legs, a crutch is unnecessary.

If you have two perfectly good legs, but you injured one, a crutch can be a temporary necessity. Eventually, you don't need it anymore. In my experience, the physical therapist thinks I don't need it before I do. In my brother's experience, the physical therapist is trying desperately to get him to keep using it for a week longer than he thinks he needs to.

I don't think it's at all reasonable for a person who can walk without a crutch to sneer at the one-legged person for whom the crutch is mobility and independence.

There are raids where intentional use of dual speccs makes the raid capable of meetings its specific goals. There are raids where relying on dual speccs is unnecessary and just causes angst for no good reason, and may even make the raid less capable overall.

Unfortunately, we can all look at the one-legged person and see that a crutch is a boon to her. We're not so good at just looking at a person who has two legs and knowing who will benefit from the crutch and who just weakens himself by using it.

Roundup

Ulduar Progression

The guild is progressing steadily through Ulduar. We have killed everything except Mimron, General Vezax and Yogg-Saron. We also grabbed the medium-difficulty version of Iron Council (where you kill the medium-sized vrykul Runemaster last), so that we can start people on the quest chain for Algalon.

I really like the multiple difficulty modes of fights. It allows for much greater granularity, and it allows you to slowly introduce new elements into the fight. For example, Phase 1 and 2 of the Iron Council fight are pretty much identical to the easy mode, it's just Phase 3 which is different.

Boss Names

As a complete aside, it's interesting how the playerbase calls that fight "The Iron Council". The real name--which is the one referenced in the game and fight voice-acting--is "The Assembly of Iron". And yet in almost every forum discussion I've seen, the players refer to the fight by the different name. Is it because "Iron Council" is shorter? Maybe more evocative? Are there other bosses where the players use a different name than the given one?

Ulduar Nerfs

Blizzard has been steadily tweaking the early fights of Ulduar. I don't disagree with a lot of the nerfs. I think Blizzard overestimated the amount of DPS put out by the average guild. Though to be honest, there is a really big gap between the very high-end and the rest of the guilds.

Even my guild is probably averaging 500-1000 DPS lower than the edge guilds, and I've seen parses from a friend's guild where the average DPS is 1000 DPS lower than us. I think the gap is excessively large at this point, and Blizzard should probably look into things they could do to tighten things up.

Predictions Coming True

It's a really interesting experience, watching some of your negative predictions come true. On the one hand, you're happy that you made the correct call, but on the other hand, it would have been better all around if you had been wrong.

I made some predictions about Dual Spec, and I think this Guild Relations thread is solid evidence of the new expectations emerging.

Similarly, a long time ago I posted about the pressure to "do more". Sadly, my guild has decided to add an extra day to the raid schedule, going from three to four days a week, following precisely the logic laid out in that post. The idea is that the extra day will allow us to progress faster, and upping our world ranking and making us a more attractive prospective to skilled players looking for a new guild.

I can't really argue with that logic, because it's probably true, and I can make a four day schedule. But to me, guilds at our level are fairly common. However, they all seem to raid 4-5 nights a week. A guild at our level which raids 3 or less nights is rare, and what attracted me to this guild in the first place. But that of course, might be biasing me. I see a skilled guild which raids 3 nights a week. The rest of my guildmates see a skilled guild which raids 3 nights a week. We emphasize the aspect which is most important to us.

Breaking Tier 7

I've been considering a gearing dilemma lately. The 4-piece Holy Tier 7 set bonus (-5% to the cost of Holy Light) is really, really good. Insanely good, in fact.

However, you can't just wear Tier 7 forever. At what point should you break the set? Should you break it when you get your first upgrade, or should you wait to upgrade a couple pieces simultaneously? Maybe I should upgrade at the first opportunity, but keep the T7 in my bags, and swap back if I am having mana issues.

Retribution System Idea

Exorcism cannot be used on players anymore and Ghostcrawler has put up an explanation. He also states:

In the same patch where we remove the “not on players” limitation for Exorcism, we are going to change the way paladins do damage so that their normal combat moves have more depth to them instead of just using abilities every time they finish their cooldown. This should make causing damage as a paladin more interesting and also less bursty. While we have some ideas on how to accomplish that, if you have suggestions or your own ideas about how this could work, this would be a good time to share them. (As examples of abilities you don’t just use whenever their cooldown has finished, you might look at Conflagrate, Brain Freeze, Rip, Overpower or Arcane Blast.)

It's hard to work with Ret, as you can't make changes that will seriously affect Holy or Protection. Here's an idea I had that's relatively simple, but might tone down Ret and make it more interesting.

1. Increase the talent Vengeance by 2 points for 5 stacks of 5% each.


2. Change Crusader Strike to require 2 stacks of Vengeance, and to consume 2 stacks of Vengeance when used.


3. Change Divine Storm to require 3 stacks of Vengeance, and to consume 3 stacks of Vengeance when used.


4. If Crusader Strike or Divine Storm crits, they still generate a stack of Vengeance (net loss of 1 and 2 stacks respectively).


5. Tune the numbers so Ret puts out the damage you want.

This is a very simple system, but CS and DS now eat Vengeance charges, while auto-attacks and Judgment generate them. You can't burst right off the bat, as you have to build Vengeance charges.

As well, I don't know what the optimum time to use an ability is. If you're at 2 charges, do you wait for 3 charges to Divine Storm, or do you Crusader Strike right away? If your Judgement cooldown is coming up, should you delay a special in order to maximize Judgement damage? Will the value of Haste and Crit go up? Will slightly faster weapons be better than slow weapons? There's a fair amount of room for the theorycrafters to play with.

It might even be good in PvP, as you can trade off using an ability right now for a bigger ability later.

Finally, this is fairly simple to implement. We only touch 3 talents in the top half of Retribution. Vengeance is already the heart of the Retribution tree, so making it even more important is not much of a stretch. It doesn't affect Holy or Protection at all. It also works fairly well for a leveling paladin. First they would get Vengeance, which is always good. Then they get Crusader Strike, and that introduces the mechanic at a very simple level. Ten levels later they get Divine Storm and the full range of choice.

Raining Titles, Other Updates

I've picked up a ton of titles in the last week or so:

• the Argent Champion
• the Explorer
• Loremaster
• Ambassador
• of Stormwind (from the Argent Tournament)

If you're looking for money, get to the Champion level of the Argent Tournament as soon as possible. Each daily is worth 13g, and you can get an additional 10g from the Champion's Purse. (You can get a Writ instead of the Purse if you want Reputation instead.)

I'm still a terrible jouster, but I will share my super-secret jousting technique: Put up 3 shields and melee the opponent. When they start to move away, Shield-Break them and then close to melee range before they can charge you. Then continue meleeing. It's pretty slow, but it works all the time.

I'm a bit disappointed with the end of the Black Knight quest. It feels like Blizzard squandered an opportunity there.

Fishing in Wintergrasp is awesome. Pretty much the only fish you get are the ones needed for Fish Feasts, so it's the best place to fish for raid consumables.

Uldar is lots of fun. I've killed Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, and Iron Council so far. My guild runs with 3 Holy paladins and 1 Resto Shaman, and I can't help but think life would be so much easier if the numbers were flipped.

I've decided to try a new technique of primarily healing with Holy Light and Holy Shock. The new Infusion of Light works out to an extra 6-10% crit rate for the next Holy Light. It seems pretty decent so far, but more testing is required. I'm even considering replacing Glyph of Flash of Light with Glyph of Holy Shock.

Still haven't got enough money for dual-spec, as raiding costs are chewing up the income from the dailies. I'm considering going Protection as my second spec. There's a really intriguing Prot build that skips Spiritual Attunement, opting to use Glyph of Seal of Blood for mana regen instead. It features really high threat and DPS, and its mana does not depend on incoming damage at all, potentially making it amazingly good for off-tanking. The cost, however, is the self-damage from Seal of Blood. But since Blood has been rebalanced away from the burst damage of the Judgement, the self-damage might be tolerable. I have no idea if this build will actually work, but it's a very interesting idea.

Also, I could use some help updating Raider 101 to 3.1. If you're up to speed on the new theorycraft for your class, please consider editing the page or leaving a comment.

Raid Healing Idea

Right now, paladin healing is almost in a good place. The only issue is raid healing. I know that paladins are supposed to be weak at raid healing, but I think the current situation is excessive. Relying on Glyph of Holy Light is insane.

As well, Flash of Light is really weak. It's still highly efficient, but it just isn't powerful enough to handle current damage levels. Holy Light has pretty much become the weapon of choice these days.

Because I like trying to kill two birds with one stone, here's an idea to help both problems:

What if a paladin had a glyph or high-level talent such that casting a Flash of Light automatically cast a second Flash of Light on a injured target within 10 yards. Flash of Light would become more useful, we get a little taste of smart healing, our throughput when raid healing would increase, and we could hit more than one person at a time. I think it would still be weaker than the three other classes at raid healing, but it would close the gap some.

Here's my idea in Glyph form:

Glyph of Light's Mercy
Major Glyph
Your Flash of Light heals an additional friendly target within 10 yards. Increases the cost of Flash of Light by 100%.

So Flash of Light's cost doubles, but we can use it to raid heal somewhat effectively.

Patch First Impressions

I really need to update more.

Servers were pretty unstable on Tuesday, but seem to have stabilized last night. We killed Flame Leviathan and then banged our heads against Ignis for a few hours. Good times.

Lots of little things I like in this patch. In no particular order:

• Swimming mounts are great! No more getting randomly dismounted.


• I really like the changes to the Quest tracker. Being able to use quest items--as well as opening the quest log by clicking on the tracker--is extremely nice. As well, allowing multiple Achievements to be tracked is great.


• Previewing talents is awesome! If you haven't enabled it yet, it's in Interface Options -> Display -> Preview Talent Changes. This allows you to play with your talents before locking them in. Sadly, I forgot to enable it before doing my initial spec, promptly made a mistake, and had to pay 40g to fix it.


• I like the changes to fishing, especially the daily. Always catching something makes it a lot smoother than before, and using bait to catch better fish just makes sense.


• The Argent Tournament is pretty neat. I'm rather terrible at jousting, but it's still fun. I really like the shield graphics. Using vibrant colours and graphics in that manner was excellent work.


• The Exorcism and Shield of Righteousness changes are very useful for Holy soloing. I still haven't scrounged up the gold for dual-spec, but being able to use Exorcism more is a god-send.


• Also great is moving the page forward/back on the AH to the top part of the UI. Having to scroll down all the time was annoying.

All in all, it looks to be a pretty good patch. Blizz just needs to resolve the server performance issues, and everything will be fine.

As for Ulduar, the only thought I have is that there seems to be a lot of raid damage. We went in there with 4 Holy paladins, a Disc priest, and 2 Resto druids and it was pretty painful until we added a Resto shaman. As well, Flash of Light is almost totally useless now. It isn't even strong enough for raid healing! I was half-tempted to just remove it from my cast bars. Also, I really miss multiple Sacred Shields.

Ulduar!

(Video by Cranius and Summergale)

Oh man, I am so not ready for this patch. I don't have enough gold for dual-spec, and I really should have done some fishing last weekend.

Heh, one of the advantages of Blizzard taking so long to release patches is that there's always a thrill of excitement when one comes out. People make movies, there's breathless reporting on everything coming out, everyone is blogging and chattering away. Energy levels are very high.

If Blizzard released a patch every month, I don't think it would have the same impact.

Made Me Smile

I just showed a newbie dwarf paladin how to get from Ironforge to Stormwind via the tram.

Good times. :)

Dual-Specs and Loot Distribution

Karl asks:

What are your thoughts on loot distro for classes that dual-spec during raids? Use dkp, or main spec rolls (but what is main spec now? and is it fair to classes who likely won't change specs? (ranged dps mostly)

It really depends on how your guild handles loot now. The guilds that run on pure DKP probably won't change anything. Pure DKP systems don't disadvantage pure DPS because the hybrids purchase more items, which tends to keep their DKP lower than the pure classes. In my experience, pure classes usually have more DKP than hybrids of similar attendance.

However, guilds with a priority system in place will probably have their members declare a main spec, and use that to determine who gets what. They may add a new level to the priority scheme. For example, "main-spec > off-spec > alts" might become "main-spec > 2nd-spec > off-spec > alts". But they may not, feeling this is more trouble than it is worth.

If you're really min-maxing, say with a Loot Council, you may see gear distributed with an eye to how much time is spent in each role. For example, pure classes might get preference on DPS gear because they will use it 100% of the time. Tank/DPS hybrids might get preference over Healer/DPS hybrids because it is more likely that a Tank will need to switch to DPS for several fights.

I don't think dual-spec will really change loot distribution though. Most hybrids already pick up multiple sets of gear under current systems, and I don't think it is worth the effort to formalize it.

It might cause drama in PuGs. PuGs will probably have to declare what type of loot they are looking for at the start of the run, as a DPS-main might be switching to healer just for this run, but would still want to roll on DPS gear.

Optimizing Judgements in 3.1

3.1 will bring some changes to paladin Judgements. As a result, the optimal way to Judge in a raid is unclear. Here is a breakdown of the issue.

Constraints

1. Holy can only Judge Light or Wisdom from range.
2. Protection cannot share a Judgement with another spec because Judgements of the Just will be lost.*
3. The maximum amount of healing from Light comes from Retribution.
4. Wisdom and Justice have the same effect regardless of which paladin Judges it.
5. Wisdom increases the DPS of the raid by allowing DPS to spend more time in full burn mode.
6. Justice generally does nothing useful.

* I'm not 100% sure on this point, but I think it's the current accepted wisdom.

Solution 1: Ret judges Light, Holy judges Wisdom, Protection judges Justice

Pros: Maximizes healing from Light; no interference with Judgements of the Just

Cons: Relies on Holy to keep Wisdom up, Holy has to judge at least once every 20 seconds, does not guarantee 100% uptime on Wisdom

Solution 2: Ret judges Wisdom, Holy judges Light, Protection judges Justice.

Pros: 100% uptime on Wisdom; no interference with Judgements of the Just

Cons: Much lower passive healing from Light

Solution 3: Ret judges Light, Holy judges Light, Protection judges Wisdom

Pros: 100% uptime on Wisdom; no interference with JotJ; Holy spends the minimum amount of time judging possible

Cons: Slightly less than maximum heal from Light possible; if Protection is not tanking the focused mob, Wisdom is not helping the bulk of the raid.

---

Personally, I like Solution 2. It maximizes DPS, and leaves healing in the hands of the healers. Large amounts of passive healing is very helpful, but can be compensated for by direct heals. In my mind, ensuring maximum DPS is more likely to win the fight for you than extra undirected healing.

However, there are other opinions. Ferraro argues for Solution 1, insisting that it is not very hard for a Holy paladin to have 100% uptime on Wisdom. I'm skeptical of that claim, especially as the fights get harder. If something goes wrong, Judging is the first thing to be dropped by a Holy paladin, in favor of spamming heals.

Solution 3 is pretty good, but if you don't have a Protection paladin, you end up having to go back to the Light/Wisdom debate. As well, if the Protection paladin is off tanking her own mob in a corner, then the raid doesn't get the benefit of her Judgement.

Fixing Chain Disconnecting

Cadfael at Elitist Jerks has written a guide to fixing disconnecting in raids. It's long and detailed, with several fixes that can help if you are suffering from:

• Sometimes disconnects after porting / logging in to Dalaran
• Disconnects at heavy raid AOE damage and events like Thaddius, Gluth
• Chain disconnects in general
• Excessive disconnects at Sartharion
• Excessive long phase of "red question marks" after a patch when the client's cache was deleted or you don't see NPCs and player for a long time or even disconnect seemingly unmotivated after a new patch often
• Often disconnect after porting in or out of an instance

It's an extremely good article that has a lot of suggestions that can easily be implemented.

Email Scam

So I received this email today:

***NOTICE OF FINAL WARNING***

Account Action: 3 Hour Suspension

Account Offense: Violation of EULA and Terms of Service - Transfer of Account Ownership

Details: An investigation of your World of Warcraft account has found strong evidence that the account in question is being sold or traded. In accordance with EULA section 4, Paragraph B, listed below:

World of Warcraft -> Legal -> End User License Agreement

and Section 8 of the Terms of Use:

Blizzard Entertainment -> Legal -> Terms of Use

A 3-hour probationary suspension is pending on this account, awaiting confirmation from a specialist. A final warning has been issued. The investigation will be continued by the Account Administration team to determine the any further suspensions. If the account in question is found in violation of the EULA and Terms of Use, further action will be taken. Be aware that any additional inappropriate actions may result in the permanent closure of the account.

Thank you for respecting our position on this matter.

**In order to prevent an elongated suspension, we request that you verify your legitimate ownership of the account here:

[Address redacted]

Any disputes or questions concerning this account action can only be addressed by Account Administration. To learn more about how Account Administration is able to assist you, please visit us at http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowaa/.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives typically must lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Please visit the World of Warcraft Policies and Terms of Use Agreement: (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p) and (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/termsofuse.shtml) for further information.

Regards,
Ezartial
Billing & Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
Account Administration Overview

This email is a scam. But I have to admit that it is very good. It looks professional, has lots of links to real Blizzard sites. Heck, it might even be a real Blizzard email, but with a couple extra lines added. It almost got me, I actually logged into WoW to check if my account was suspended. But the middle link (which I redacted) actually points to some *.tk domain. Thankfully I didn't click on it.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if you cannot trust your communication lines at all. Email is rapidly approaching that point. Phone lines have begun their slide, as anyone who's received those automated voice notifications of winning contests will know. Maybe we'll have to go back to imposing a per-message cost on communications, so scams like this become economically unfeasible. I don't really want to see the cost of email increase, but better that than having email/phones become completely useless.

Good Enough, Part II

Gevlon comments on the previous post:

My point was that the content defines "good enough". You are right that you can select the guild. However the selection goes for content and not for effort. Effort is defined by content.

This is true to a degree. But I think it's still a good idea to farm and exceed content requirements for several reasons:

1. Future Content

We are not just gearing for the current fight, we are gearing for future fights. Sure, if Patchwerk only requires 2.5K DPS, you're fine. But what do you do when the next fight requires 5K DPS? If you prepare beforehand, you're golden. Otherwise, you have to work on getting the required gear instead of trying the fight you really want to do.

The moment Ulduar comes out, we're going to drop Naxx like a hot potato and dive straight in.

2. More Options

If your gear exceeds requirements, it gives you more flexibility. You can do easy encounters or hard encounters as you choose. You can bring alts, because the mains can handle it. You can let a healer attempt to DPS Scions of Eternity for an Achievement, instead of needing her to heal 100% of the time.

It's like having a lot of gold. You don't need 50K gold. Personally, aside from buying my Epic flying, I've never exceeded 5K gold at any one time. But having more gold on hand makes life easier, because it gives you more options.

Additionally, it also gives you flexibility in recruiting. If a portion of your raid exceeds minimums, it allows you recruit good under-geared players and gear them up without having to go back and farm old content.

3. Greater Margin

Better gear reduces the probability of a catastrophic mistake. If you kill a boss in 5 minutes instead of 10, it's less likely that someone will make a mistake which causes a wipe.

As well, better gear allows you to be successful with less skill. Yes, Ensidia and the other top 10 guilds can probably blow through content with minimum gear requirements. But most of us are not Ensidia. If my time-on-target is 10% less than an Ensidia rogue--because she's better at movement--I'm going to need to hit 11% harder in order to do the same damage.

4. Raids are More Fun

Most of us raid because we enjoy raiding. But honestly, wiping on content we've already beaten is not fun at all. A high degree of effort leads to faster, cleaner raids which is more fun for everyone.

Wipes also increase the effort required. For example, my guild uses Food+Flask on all our Naxx runs, even though we probably don't need to. But wiping incurs repair costs and wastes time. The Food+Flask contributes to a faster run with a minimum of additional costs.

5. Expectation Management

If you expect more from people, they will respond to that, and rise to the challenge. If you expect the bare minimum, then the minimum is all they will give you.

Maybe Food+Flask is unnecessary. But it is a signal to the raid that you are willing to give 100% on this attempt. That you are willing to incur a cost, maybe even just a symbolic cost, to ensure success.

I think people respond to that, mirror the group they find themselves in. If you're in a raid where people slack off, often you will start to slack off as well. If you're in a raid which has high expectations, often you will rise to meet those expectations.

Conclusion

The most important part is to have the entire raid on the same page as to what "good enough" means. But there are significant advantages to having a higher standard of "good enough" than is strictly required for content.

However, it's also possible to take this too far, especially when looking at new content. By far the most important element in mastering new content is spending time on it, not gearing up for it. If Ulduar comes out, and you decide to spend a few weeks farming Kel'Thuzad instead of trying new bosses, you are making a mistake. But having a raid that chose to exceed the minimum requirements back in Naxx will help you greatly in Ulduar.

Good Enough

Gevlon had a post up about gear and effort where he states that "hunting for best-in slots, grinding an ilvl 213 to replace an ilvl 200 epic is pointless." He is immediately taken to task for this attitude in the comments.

However, I'm much more sympathetic to Gevlon's view. We all have our limits, the things we are not willing to do.

For example, here's a list of things I'm not willing to do:

1. Switch professions. I'm Enchanting/Mining, and I really have no idea why. But I'm not willing to switch and power-level professions to whatever the flavor of the month currently is.*
2. Raid more than 3 days a week.
3. Take time off work.
4. Give someone else my account information so they could play my characters if I am not there.

A lot of these items are common practices at the very top end.

Everyone settles for "good enough", it's just that our definitions of "good enough" vary. One of the important factors when looking for a guild is find a guild with a similar definition of "good enough". If one person's definition is much lower than the rest of the guild, or much higher, it will cause resentment, and eventually drama and unhappiness.

If you food+flask every fight, and other people don't, it will grate. If everyone uses food+flask, but you're unhappy about spending the time to get consumables, it will grate on you as well. In both cases, you would probably better off in separate guilds (or at least, in separate raids).

Again, it's about shared expectations. Groups work best when everyone is on the same page, and has the same understanding about what "good enough" really means.

*Actually, I am thinking of switching Mining to Jewelcrafting or Blacksmithing. But I don't have a gatherer alt, so I'm procrastinating.

Evaluating Wrath Design, Part I

With 3.1 coming in the near future, it's time to take a look back at 3.0. However, rather than focusing on specific elements like raids or questing, let's examine some of the changes in direction that Wrath came up with. I'll keep to a very simple thumbs up or thumbs down system, and this will probably span multiple posts.

Bring the Player, not the Class

The concept of "Bring the Player, not the Class" has proved to be extremely attractive to the playerbase. It caught the imagination, and has pretty much been embraced whole-heartedly. As for execution, I think Blizzard has done a really good job. There's a couple of exceptions, such as Death Knight tanks with cooldowns, maybe Rogues in general, and Shaman Bloodlust/Heroism, but overall you don't really need to min-max raid composition anywhere close to what was necessary before Wrath. Just grabbing a good mix of classes is all you need.

Verdict: Thumbs Up!

Phasing

The new phasing tech, where how the world is presented to you changes as you complete quests, allows players to actually have an effect on the world, and is extremely cool. The Ebon Blade and Argent Dawn questlines in Icecrown are cited as a high point of the questing experience, and it is entirely due to their use of phasing. I am quite excited to see how Blizzard develops this further.

Verdict: Thumbs Up!

Championing

Championing factions, where you gain rep with a faction when running instances wearing their tabard, is a much, much better way of earning reputation than the previous methods. Breaking the link between factions and specific instances was really necessary. It gives you so much more flexibility in choosing what instances you want to run, and ensures that you are always working on the reputation you want.

Second, I think championing works very well on a thematic level, tying the current faction to the tabard you wear. Theres a nice visual and thematic emphasis there, that just makes the whole mechanic work. Wearing the faction's tabard really drives home the point that you are doing things in their name. As well, the tabard slot doesn't cause you to lose a gear slot, unlike previous versions such as the Argent Dawn trinket.

I like championing so much, I was very disappointed that the Sons of Hodir didn't have a tabard.

Verdict: Thumbs Up!

Glyphs

In the original incarnation of glyphs, they often had both a positive and a negative side. They weren't just bonuses, but they actually changed the nature of the spell. The classic example is the Flash of Light glyph, which cut the heal in half, but added a HoT.

That idea seems to have been mostly abandoned. Now most glyphs are outright bonuses to your chosen spells, and are far less interesting. To be honest, Glyphs seem unnecessary to me, occupying much the same space as talents.

Verdict: Thumbs Down!

Ask Coriel: Healing Mods

Mike asks:

I wanted to know if you use any mods to help in seeing who needs to be healed and who needs buffs. I don't plan to heal much just in those cases when my guild do old world runs for fun and I'm the only healer class available. well I take that back I might dual spec healing once it comes out :)

I use the mod Grid to see the healthbars of everyone in the raid. Grid can also be configured to show when a specific buff or debuff is on a character, and I have mine set to show Beacon of Light and Sacred Shield.

For paladin Blessings, I use PallyPower.

Those are pretty much the only mods I use. I do have all my heals use a macro so they cast on mouseover.

/cast [target=mouseover, help][] Holy Light

This allows me to just hover my mouse cursor over the person's healthbar on Grid and cast the heal, rather than explicitly switching targets.

That's about it for mods and macros that I use for healing. It's pretty much just Grid + mouseover macros.

Sheath of Light and Paladin Scaling

I like the idea of Sheath of Light. But the way it has been implemented has contributed to some weirdness with paladin scaling. The purpose of Sheath of Light was to let heals cast by a Ret paladin scale in a small way, rather than remaining extremely weak all the time.

However, there are 3 types of paladin abilities:

1. Abilities that scale with Attack Power only. These are mostly offensive abilities that belong to Protection and Retribution.


2. Abilities that scale with Attack Power and Spell Power. These are baseline abilities that all specs use, such as Judgement and Consecration.


3. Abilities that scale with Spell Power only. Heals, and Holy Shock.

The interaction of Sheath of Light and category 2 in particular is problematic. I remember that during the Wrath Beta, Seal of Righteousness was often the best Seal for Ret. Eventually it got nerfed down, but became very weak for Holy, and had to be buffed with a deep Holy talent. The reason this happened is because if the SP coefficient was high, Sheath would allow Ret paladins to use a lot of that SP coefficient, and the ability would outstrip Category 1 abilities. Balancing paladin numbers would have been a lot cleaner if Sheath did not affect abilities in Category 2. That way you could balance the AP coefficient around Retribution/Protection paladins, and separately balance the SP coefficient around Holy Paladins.

Even in Category 3, Sheath doesn't affect all abilities. Most notably, Sacred Shield doesn't scale with the granted Spell Power. This may have been an oversight at first, but now is maintained for PvP balance reasons.

When you get right down to it, Sheath of Light as it exists right now is overly broad. We don't really want to give Ret lots of Spell Power for general use. Most of the abilities Retribution uses scale primarily with AP, and adding extra SP scaling just complicates things. But we do want to give a Retribution paladin the option of increasing the power of her heals.

Sheath of Light should become a lot narrower in scope. The SP granted should explicitly apply to Holy Light and Flash of Light only. Then the coefficients of all the Category 2 abilities should be retuned so that each spec has an appropriate result. (The same idea would apply to Touched by the Light in Protection.) I think this would make paladin scaling cleaner and simpler. AP and SP scaling would no longer depend on each other, but would remain completely separate.

Of course, this would drastically change the value of Sheath of Light. It might come to be considered a PvP-only seal. But untangling AP and SP from each other would be an overall benefit for the paladin class.

Will the Last Hybrid Paladin Please Turn Off the Lights?

From the latest patch notes:

Spiritual Attunement: Removed from trainers. It is now available deep in the Protection tree for 2 ranks at 5/10%.

I don't speak for all paladins. In fact, at this point in the game I probably speak for very few of them. I belong to the Hybrid faction of paladins. It's probably because I created my paladin so many years ago, when the class was very different.

The Hybrid faction holds that the paladin should not overspecialize, that the baseline 0/0/0 paladin should be minimally compentent at healing, DPS, or tanking. Not raid-viable, but minimally competent. A Ret paladin should be able to heal a little bit, to tank at least the normal instances and group quests in the proper gear. In a pinch, maybe even play a small part in a raid. A levelling paladin should be able to handle all of these roles, regardless of spec.

I've tanked Tidewalker murlocs as Holy. I've healed as Protection. I've tanked all the normal Wrath instances as Retribution. To me, being able to do all this is an essential part of the paladin identity. I understand the need for specialization in the current game, but being a hybrid--being able to contribute to a role that we are not specced for--is still important to some of us. It's why we chose this class over all the others.

But for this to work, the baseline paladin must have access to all the necessary tools. For healing, we need Flash of Light and Holy Light. For damage we need Judgement and a damage Seal. For tanking we need Righteous Fury and Spiritual Attunement. By themselves, these tools alone will never make us raid-viable or preferred. But they allow us to try.

In the past, Blizzard has understood the Hybrid perspective. They gave us talents like Sheath of Light and Touched by the Light that allow the non-healer specs to heal more effectively. They reworked Fanaticism when the threat reduction was introduced, so that Retribution would still be able to tank.

Holy needs Spiritual Attunement to tank, to fulfill the hybrid nature of the paladin. Retribution at least has a replacement with Judgements of the Wise.

Maybe this doesn't matter in a world of specialists. Maybe dual-specs puts the final nail into the paladin-as-hybrid coffin. But I hope Blizzard reconsiders removing Spiritual Attunement from Holy's reach. I know that Spiritual Attunement is broken for a healing paladin and raid damage. But I think that there are other, better solutions.

My suggestion is to fold Spiritual Attunement into Righteous Fury and add a penalty to keep Holy from using it. Turn it into more of a true tanking stance.

Righteous Fury
24% of base mana
Instant cast
Increases the threat generated by your Holy spells by 90%, but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50%. When healed by other friendly targets' spells, the paladin gains an amount of mana equal to 8% of the amount healed. Lasts 30 min.

Alternatively, rather than a 50% reduction in healing power, maybe you could condition Illumination to only work when Righteous Fury is not active, just like Fanaticism. The baseline paladin could still tank if necessary, but the extra threat makes RF unattractive to a dpsing paladin, while the healing penalty makes RF unattractive to the healing paladin.

Even if you don't like my suggestion, I hope that you understand my perspective on the paladin class. It may not be a common perspective anymore, but I think it is still of value.

Rolling On DPS Gear While Healing

Andrew asks:

Looking for your opinion, and if you choose to blog it, the wider community on whether it’s reasonable to run an instance (or potentially a Raid) as a healer (or tank) but request to roll on only dps items? I refer mostly to Pugs as guilds will have their own rules on this.

Background, been raiding as a Holy Pally for a while, geared with quite a few best in slot, probably only 8-10 potential small upgrades left from Naxx 25 and the Eye. Trying to slowly build an offspec rest set. I’m currently doing heroics/Naxx 10 pugs as holy and only rolling as offspec after main spec passes. I think I am going to start stating prior to each instance that I will only run if I can roll as if my main spec was dps.

I want to keep raiding with my guild as holy, which is 2-3 times a week at present, respect costs to go ret on the in between days would be 200-300g a week which is way outside of my budget. It’s always much harder to find healers/tanks to fill heroics/Naxx10 pugs, so I’m much more likely to be able to go when ever I want to. And this would seem to be providing a service to the community who need more healers (and tanks) to fill pugs for when they want to go.

In my ret set I already have 4 epics and the rest blue so I’m not going to be rolling on every item anyway. In giving up my roll on any healer items, the other classes which can spec healing would get a first roll on some offspec stuff. In a 10 man, the other 2 healers would get more rolls and it would be as if we had 1 more dps. But as I want plate with strength, while there would offset for pallies, warriors/DK’s would not get any level of exchange….

Am I just being greedy? Given that many doing heroics/Naxx 10 may ‘need’ the items more than I do? Still there must be others in my same position out there, and as before, providing service.

If you arrange things with your group beforehand, and everything is agreed to, then it's fine.

That being said, I'm not really sure how much time you will save. You can just pick up leftover DPS gear while healing. As you note, you already have four DPS epics, and as your DPS players gear up, there will be more leftovers for you.

Personally, I think trying to get groups to agree to unusual loot terms is a hassle, and has a lot of potential for drama. I mean, if it was flipped around, and you wanted [Torch of Holy Fire] from Kel'Thuzad, and a Feral druid demanded to be allowed to roll on it for his healing offset, you'd probably be unhappy. And if you were having a hard time finding a tank, you'd be resentful of the druid for forcing you to make that choice.

I know Gevlon the Greedy Goblin would probably be horrified by this attitude, as he would feel that a agent is free to demand whatever price he can get away with. But in my opinion, playing hardball like this just leads to unpleasant runs, and loot isn't really worth that.

Dual Spec Predictions

There's lots of angst and concern going around in the WoW community over the introduction of dual specs. Here are my thoughts on who the winners and losers of this feature will be.

Big Winners: Healers and Tanks

Dual specs are pure and absolute win for healers and tanks. They get their main spec for raids, and then can do a variety of things with the second spec. They could go with DPS for farming and soloing, making that aspect of the game much less frustrating. Or run a PvP spec to participate in PvP. Or even run a second type of healer/tank spec, if absolutely crazy.

There's pretty much no downside for the healers and tanks. They get first choice of the healing or tanking gear, and can actually use their offsets.

Small Winners: "Pure" DPS Classes

For the "pure" DPS classes (rogues, mages, warlocks, hunters) dual specs are useful, but not game-changing. These classes will most probably end up using their second spec for PvP. You might see some of them using the second spec for Replenishment, depending on how popular those specs are. If Survival, Destruction, or Frost are popular in and of themselves, people may not bother.

I don't really see dual-specs changing the game significantly for pure DPS classes. Some of them might not even bother to purchase the option.

Big Losers: DPS Hybrids

DPS hybrids are going to take this hard. First, it's going to be expected that the second spec will be healing if you can heal, or tanking otherwise. No PvP specs for you!

Second, there still won't be enough healers/tanks, and lots of dps, so guilds will will pressure you into healing "just for now, until we recruit more healers." But they won't be able to recruit, or recruiting will suddenly become less urgent, so you'll see a lot of DPS hybrids get stuck healing.

Because the cost of switching will become so low, the norm will change such that switching to healing is the expected behavior, even if the player doesn't want to heal. After all, why spend all that time and effort trying to recruit scarce healers when one of your DPS hybrids can switch for zero cost?

Finally, because the hybrid still considers themselves as DPS, they'll won't get primary consideration on healing loot, as the healer mains will have that. However, adding insult to injury, I predict that many guilds will start giving the pure DPS classes priority on DPS gear. This will be justified on the grounds that the pure classes will use the gear 100% of the time, while the DPS hybrid spends a lot of their time healing. So obviously the pures will receive priority "for the good of the guild as they will get the most use out of the gear."

Conclusions

I think the healers and tanks will be very happy. The pure DPS classes won't really see much change. But I think there will be lots of drama surrounding the DPS hybrids.

Immortal and Undying

Like many of the guilds who have completed Naxxramas, we are working on the The Immortal and The Undying achievements. I find that I have very mixed feelings on these achievements.

First, I would like to make it clear that I respect these achievements. I consider guilds with Immortal (and Undying to a lesser extent) to be very skilled. In my experience, you almost always mess up on Immortal because you made a mistake, not because of randomness or factors out of your control. Especially as a healer, Immortal represents perfection. You get Immortal, you did the instance perfectly, and that is something to be applauded. In my opinion, a raid should always be striving for that perfection, even if they fall short most of the time.

However, on Tuesday my 10-man group went for an Undying attempt. Most of us had cleared Naxxramas together the previous two weeks, so we were pretty comfortable with each other. We went deep into Naxx, perfect on every boss up to Kel'Thuzad. Facing KT with an Undying on the line is a rush. We start the fight, go through phase 1 fine, KT comes alive and then the main tank fails to move out of a Shadow Fissure. Instant death. Achievement lost.

Do you know what I felt at that moment?

Profound relief.

I wasn't upset or angry or disappointed or even sad. All I could feel was relief that I wasn't the one who screwed up!

We actually killed KT that attempt. The OT took over tanking, and we battle-ressed the main tank. The poor guy was so flustered that he ended up dying to another Shadow Fissure. And this was someone who had done KT successfully the previous two weeks. The off-tank had to tank KT and the adds for the rest of the fight.

Why was I so relieved? Because the cost of dying was so high. You basically cost everyone else in the raid a week's worth of effort. If it was a mistake on a normal fight, you wipe, pick yourself up and try again. All you really lose is 10 minutes and some gold.

Secondly, the social cost is very high for a single mistake. In the back of your mind, you have to wonder if the group will ostracize you for that one mistake. Even if you think they won't, the weight of that potential ostracism is terrible. And you know, they might end up excluding you. If the raid leader puts together another Undying run next week, I don't think he's going to invite this tank. (The tank does have some connection issues that make the decision more understandable.) Despite the fact that this tank has run with us more or less successfully for the last three weeks.

And yet, I really enjoyed that run. People played skillfully. They concentrated hard, and that effort showed. The run was quick, clean, and efficient. If the Undying achievement did not exist, I would consider that to have been the best raid I have ever run in terms of sheer performance. This run was so much better than my usual experience for farm runs, where people start slacking off.

As well, I don't think I really like "altering tactics" for Immortal. Things like changing your spec to emphasize survival, or taking more healers than you would normally, or using Seal of Command instead of Seal of Blood. To me, Immortal represents perfection. And perfection is the product of execution, not something to be gamed. You play a certain way because that is the best way to play, not because it is the most survivable. Like, do I think my current 54/17/0 spec is the best spec? No, but it has the most survivability.

Perhaps an analogy will illustrate what I'm trying to get at. Baseball has a concept called a Perfect Game. 27 batters come up, and 27 batters go down without a single one making it to a base. It is the ultimate accomplishment for a pitcher, and something that every pitcher aspires to. But no pitcher wakes up and says, "Today, I'm going to pitch a perfect game." They just go out and pitch their best, and very rarely a pitcher is able to achieve that plateau of perfection.

Essentially, what I want is for Immortal to be a side-effect of playing perfectly, rather than a goal that is worked towards in and of itself. Something worth striving for all the time, but not something that requires playing in a different manner other than what you would consider your most effective.

Titles

Search the Armory for all characters named "Dora".

Check out the titles on the level 80s.

They must have been ecstatic when that Achievement was revealed.

Updates

I really need to write more posts. I have a bad habit of not putting down ideas until I've "fleshed them out in my head." But then I never actually end up writing those posts. I need to just start writing, and work out the idea while writing.

In WoW news, I killed Malygos-25 on Sunday, though in a 20-man raid as we were going for the achievement. It's an interesting fight, apart from my utter and total failure on Phase 3. Seriously, the best thing I can say about my performance while flying the dragon is that I soaked up some damage which might have hit someone who was actually contributing. I do want to do that phase again properly. Maybe I'll try and practice a bit more with Aces High. I've done that quest several times before, but I now I know what I should be practicing, which is somewhat different than doing the quest solo. Malygos was the last kill I needed for my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title.

After Malygos, I got to do Sartharion-3D. Now that is a crazy fight. So many different elements make the fight very chaotic. I think a lot of the challenge here is learning to focus on the elements that only concern you, and trusting that everyone else will handle their part. But we killed him, and I have Twilight Vanquisher.

I'm using "the Seeker" as my title though. It's still my favorite title.

I've also gotten a fair amount of loot over the last two weeks, including 4-piece Tier 7 (and matching boots!). The shoulders are a terrible, terrible model.

So I've basically done all the content in the game at the moment, which is something I've never been able to say before. The one Achievement that I really want to do is And They Would All Go Down Together, as it makes the fight very different. We're still working on various Achievements, most notably Immortal. I've respecced to 54/17/0, to maximize survivability with Divine Guardian, Improved Righteous Fury, and Blessed Life. It's a pretty good build, but you can really feel the missing Crit talents. And Pursuit of Justice, I really miss Pursuit of Justice.

Ah well, good times.

Bloodlust Timing

Here is a very interesting theorycrafting discussion on when a raid should pop Bloodlust/Heroism. Should you Bloodlust early in the fight, or should you wait until 35%, when a lot of the extra damage Execute-style talents kick in?

Surprisingly, the answer turns out to be that it doesn't really matter! So the final conclusion is that the best use of Bloodlust is:

1. If there is no other factor, use Bloodlust early to maximize the number of people and cooldowns available.
2. If one particular phase needs to be burnt through in the shortest possible time, use Bloodlust then, and match cooldowns to Bloodlust.

Honestly, this result seemed a little counter-intuitive to me at first, but the math looks good. If you're interested, check out the algebra at the link.

Here's a "real numbers" example. Let's say there's a boss with 1,000,000 health. You can do 1000 damage-per-second. Below 35% health, let's say you do an extra 20% damage for 1200 dps. Further, let's say that Bloodlust boosts your damage by 30% for 40 seconds.

Case 1: Bloodlust Late

If you Bloodlust at the end, you do 1000 * 1.2 * 1.3 = 1560 dps for 40 sec.

1. Normal mode takes 650,000 Health / 1000 DPS = 650 sec.
2. Bloodlust for 40 seconds, doing 40*1560 = 62,400 damage.
3. Then you do the remaining 287,600 damage in 287,600 health / 1200 dps = 240 sec.

Total time to kill the boss = 650 + 40 + 240 = 930 seconds.

Case 2: Bloodlust Early

If you Bloodlust at the start, you do 1000 * 1.3 = 1300 dps for 40 sec.

1. Bloodlust for 40 seconds, doing 40*1300 = 52,000 damage.
2. Boss has 598,000 health until 35%. It will take you 598,000 health / 1000 dps = 598 sec.
3. Then you do the remaining 350,000 damage in 350,000 health / 1200 dps = 292 sec.

Total time to kill the boss = 40 + 598 + 292 = 930 seconds.

Conclusion

It doesn't matter when you Bloodlust during the fight if you just look at the bonus Execute-style damage and the extra damage from Bloodlust!

There are two advantages to going early. First, everyone can line up all their cooldowns like trinkets or Avenging Wrath and use them for maximum effectiveness. Second, it is more likely that everyone is alive at the start of the fight. By the time you reach 35%, you may have lost one or two people.

However, if there is a specific phase of the fight that needs to be shortened, then you should Bloodlust at the start of that phase. For example, even though the total fight lengths are the same, in Case 1 you only spend 280 seconds in the last phase, while in Case 2 you spend 292 seconds in the last phase. If a phase does increased damage, or has a separate enrage timer like Phase 3 of Prince Malchezzar or Lady Vashj, you'd be better off waiting for that phase before you Bloodlust.

To sum up from the linked article again, the best rules for Bloodlust/Heroism timing are:

1. If there is no other factor, use Bloodlust early to maximize the number of people and cooldowns available.
2. If one particular phase needs to be burnt through in the shortest possible time, use Bloodlust then, and match cooldowns to Bloodlust.

3.1 PTR Musings

I haven't really posted anything in a while. Everything seems like the same old thing, like we're just rehashing old arguments from years ago.

Tier 8 looks to be a pretty mediocre set. No big surprise there. It's not as bad as Tier 3/Tier 7 (Redemption), but it's not as good as Tier 2 (Judgement) or Tier 6 (Lightbringer). Suicidal Zebra has pictures. The original concept artwork has a very completely-enclosed, Vorlon Encounter Suit motif. That headpiece serves as the final seal. You can imagine the headpiece coming down and locking in place, completely encasing the paladin in the armor.

This concept didn't transfer that well to the finished armor, oddly enough because the shoulders aren't big enough. So the headpiece lost its meaning, and now just looks like an weird affection. I think the armor would have been better served with a helm that completely enclosed the paladin's head. As well, the female armor entirely exposes the stomach, completely cutting against the point of the concept art.

Ah well, maybe Tier 9 will be the "good" paladin set for this expansion.

I did go poke around on the PTR server tonight. I didn't get a chance to see Hodir, but I went over to the Argent Tournament area and looked around. It looks pretty neat.

The only thing I really dislike is this:


The mount on the left is the Stormwind reward mount. It has the paladin warhorse (level 30 mount) model, but with the paladin charger colours. I think it's too close to the paladin mount. The Stormwind mount should use a different color scheme.

The Gear Manager is simple, but easy to use. It stores entire gearsets (all 16-slots). You can't do partial gearsets like in Outfitter, but it's very easy to set up and use. It's not enabled by default, but enabling it adds an icon in the top right corner of the character pane.

Dual specs look decent. Each spec gets its own glyphs and the bottom left toolbars. The other toolbars are shared between specs. Switching is essentially a five-second cast, but you can't switch in combat or in arenas.

I can't really comment on paladin trees. I think they're in an unfinished state. I built a PvE Retribution build as my second spec. I took all the talents I wanted, and I had 12 talent points left over! That's an awful lot of points for random utility.

So far, 3.1 looks like a pretty good patch.

Ask Coriel: The Value of Strength

Zack writes in:

My question specifically has to do with a neck slot item: [Titanium Earthguard Chain]. At first glance, it appears to be a tank item (note the 34 defense rating). However, I've been investigating, and compared with all the other endgame gear, this item may be (at least from my opinion) the best item that a raiding DPS Retadin can get.

My reasoning for this is that socketed with a +16 Strength gem, this neck gives a total of 65 base strength for a Paladin. Once you add the bonuses from Divine Strength (+15% Str) and Blessing of Kings (+10%) that translates to 83 Strength or 166 Attack Power.

Compared to the other alternatives ([Gem of Imprisoned Vassals], [Fool's Trial], [Collar of Dissolution], [Favor of the Dragon Queen] , etc.) for the neck slot, the Titanium Earthguard gives a Paladin 54-56 more Attack Power, albeit at the expense of some serious Crit % and in some cases Armor Penetration and Haste.

Since you seem to be one of the more knowledgeable and vocal Pally Bloggers out there, I was wondering if I could get your perspective on this issue. SO I guess in a broader sense my question is a question of ret theorycraft - which is better Crit % or AP and to what extent?

P.S. While writing this post, I found a tanking necklace with even more strength: [Nexus War Champion Beads]. 100 total Strength after socketed and Divine Strength and Blessing of Kings.

Strength is the best stat for Retribution. However, it is not the only valuable stat. The other stats such as crit, hit, agility do increase your damage, just not as much as Strength.

To see this, let's actually put dollar values on each stat. (This is just an estimate.)

1 AP = $1.00
1 Strength = $2.50
1 Crit Rating = $2.00
1 Armor Pen = $1.50
1 Agility = $1.50

Now, you can clearly see that Strength is still the most valuable stat. Let's compare [Favor of the Dragon Queen] to [Nexus War Champion Beads] for Retribution.

[Favor of the Dragon Queen]:
42 Agi = $63
63 Sta = $0
110 AP = $110
31 ArPen =$46.50
41 Crit = $82
Blue Socket = 8 Str = $20
----------------
Total = $321.50

[Nexus War Champion Beads]:
94 Sta = $0
63 Str = $157.50
28 Def = $0
34 Parry = $0
28 Block = $0
Red Socket = 16 Str = $40
---------------
Total = $197.50

The Favor of the Dragon Queen is massively better than the Nexus War Champion Beads. If you look at the values, you see that all those extra stats contribute to the total, while the Beads only have Strength. It has a lot of strength, but not enough to outweigh the other stats.

If something is "not the best", it doesn't mean that it is automatically worthless. It still has worth. You should never take statements like "Strength > All" to an extreme.

Now, how do you come up with the values for each stat? I just estimated values above. You can also do a lot of math and theorycraft values, or you can look up values on sites such as Elitist Jerks. But in general, an item that has several stats that increase your damage is usually better than an item which only has a lot of one stat.

Ask Coriel: Retribution Questions

Melissa asks:

I was looking through your new wiki (raider101) site at the ret pally rotation. I noticed you put divine storm in the #5 slot (or whoever edited) for suggested rotation.

I question this in the case of running 10 mans or heroic raids if you also equip the Venture company libram which increases your crit strike rating for 7 sec after divine storm. Does it not make more sense to judge, then use divine storm as all further attacks (for 7 sec) will have an increased crit rating? When I do this, I usually can cast crusader strike, exorcism (if possible) and sometimes another judgement while the buff is still up.

Am I misunderstanding this libram or is this just not yet noted? Does thislibram not cause spell crit and only melee crit? I just wanted to make sure my difference in rotation was plausible.

I believe the Libram is both melee and spell crit. The reason Divine Storm is lower is that all the other attacks are higher damage. As well, because Crusader Strike/Hammer of Wrath is on a short cooldown, the more you delay it, the more damage you end up losing.

Don't forget that abilities will come off cooldown after you hit DS. So you are only gaining extra crit on a couple of abilities and only at very start of the fight. That's not enough to outweigh the loss of delaying the higher damage abilities.

However, the difference between the various priority schemes is very small. My advice would be to go test rotations out on the training dummy.

My second question is on my cooldowns. I've been told by many tanks (including pally's) to NOT use Avenging Wrath at the beginning of a fight. I've been told that if I do use it, I will pull aggro off the boss and I should save it for the middle or end of a fight. What's the correct answer?

You should use Avenging Wrath very close to the start of the fight. You do need to give the tank a few seconds to build threat, but good tanks can generate threat very fast. You should be able to pop Avenging Wrath at about 10 seconds into the fight. If you can't, your tanks need to improve. Now if you have to delay, you delay, but you should try to pop AW as early as possible.

The reason you use Avenging Wrath early is so that you can use it again when it comes off cooldown in the same fight. You should be able to use AW multiple times on every fight longer than 2 minutes (which is pretty much every raid fight).

A lot of guilds will also use Heroism/Bloodlust early, so that everyone can pop their cooldowns together, while still being able to use cooldowns multiple times during the fight.

Buff Durations

Mark writes:

Why does Righteous Fury have a duration? As a protection tank, this irritates me greatly, because its one additional thing I need to pay attention to. I mean, warriors shift into defensive stance, druids go bear, and deathknights shift into frost stance. None of them have to worry about whether their threat is going to suddenly fall off because they forgot to refresh a spell.

I realise that the 'stances' that each other tanking class offers advantages and disadvantages, and that there aren't really other 'stances' that paladins have (I do NOT want our increased threat generation to be tied into our auras), however it would be nice if once we cast Righteous Fury, it would stay up until I manually clicked it off. Would that be so game breaking? Its not like its something we have to cast every pull, and its not like it's a major mana sink or anything - it just seems to be an old dinosaur from original game design that should be allowed to go extinct. Having a half hour means that if I'm not paying attention, I could wipe a group simply because I forgot to refresh the spell before a pull.

There are really two issues at play here. First, why do buffs in general have a duration? Second, why is Righteous Fury a buff, rather than a stance, form or aspect?

Let's take the first question: why do buffs have a duration? Buffs have a duration because it tests skill in a very small way. All other things being equal, a paladin who remembers to refresh Righteous Fury is simply a better paladin than one who forgets and lets it wear off. Part of playing a class well is maintaining your buffs.

You can see this very clearly with paladins and Blessings. We've all run with paladins who let their Blessings expire and have to be prodded to re-Bless. Then at the other extreme you have the paladins who keep everyone buffed all the time, who hits battle-rezed players, pets, and even warlock imps. It's a small thing, but---all other things being equal--the second type of paladin is a better player.

Not all challenges need to be amazingly hard. Small, easy challenges such as keeping buffs up are still important. Now, these small challenges need to be kept in check. Overused, they become extremely tedious and detract from more important and fun challenges, as anyone who remembers the days of 5-minute Blessings and 40-man raids will attest to.

On to the second question: Why is Righteous Fury a buff, and not a stance?

In general, WoW design likes to use buffs for mechanics which are purely additive, and use stances for when you make a choice between two effects or for an effect with both a positive and negative aspect. Blessing of Kings is purely additive, adding 10% more stats. Similarly, Righteous Fury is purely additive, adding extra threat. While warrior stances offer a choice between extra damage dealt and less damage taken.

It's more because threat is sometimes a positive stat from the perspective of the player, and sometimes a negative stat from that perspective, that Righteous Fury feels a bit different from all the other additive buffs. Essentially, there's no built-in negative to Righteous Fury. The negative doesn't come from the buff, it comes from the nature of the stat the buff provides. Compare this to Moonkin Form, where the negative--can't cast healing spells--is built into the form, and is not a side-effect of extra critical strikes.

For example, if you look at PvP, Righteous Fury becomes something that is always positive, while Moonkin Form still has negatives.

This isn't an iron-clad 100% rule. For example, Auras blur the lines a bit. You could make Auras work like Blessings fairly easily. But in general, Blizzard likes making effects with both a positive and a negative into stances or forms. But effects which are purely positive show up as buffs with a duration. Righteous Fury is a purely positive buff, always increasing threat, so it fits closer to the buff model.

Warhammer Online: Spread Too Thin

I think WAR should have cut the elves.

Seriously, no elves would have meant that there were only four main areas: Dwarf, Greenskin, Empire, and Chaos. This would have increased the concentration of players in each area. That would have lead to better PQs and PvP. I think that WAR is a game which really needs a minimum number of other players to really work.

As well, Mythic could have spent more time on those four areas and eight classes, adding more polish.

The elves would have also made a really good first expansion pack.

It seems like a lot of video games make this same mistake, attempting too much, spreading themselves too thin and doing a substandard job.

New PvP Rating System

Here is a very informative blue post from Kalgan detailing exactly how the new PvP rating system works. It's a very informative read. Here's my summary of the new system.

There are now three ratings associated with PvP: Team Rating, Personal Rating, and Matchmaker Rating.

Team Rating

• Visible.
• Required for rewards.
• Reset when a new team is created or at the beginning of a new season.
• Not used for matchmaking.
• Primarily represents the team's standing relative to other teams.
• Moves towards the Matchmaker Rating over time. The larger the discrepancy, the faster the Team Rating will move.
• Looks like a new team will start with a rating of 0 from now on, rather than starting at 1500. This makes Arena less depressing for a below-average team, and allows Blizzard to stratify gear even in the below-average zone. For example, if a piece of gear requires 1300 rating, a low-ranked team can work to achieve that rating, rather than simply restarting the team or playing very few games in order to minimize rating loss.

Personal Rating

• Visible.
• Required for rewards.
• Reset at the beginning of a new season.
• Not used for matchmaking.
• Is primarily a control on Team Rating, trying to prevent players from leeching off a high-ranked team.

Matchmaker Rating

• Hidden.
• Not required for rewards.
• Does not reset.
• Used to match teams against each other.
• Looks to use a system like Microsoft's Trueskill to rapidly determine your true rating.

A lot of the confusion with the new system occurs because the Matchmaker Rating is hidden, but determines the change in the visible Team Rating. Essentially, MMR is used to match teams, and the result of the match changes your MMR depending on what your opponent's MMR was. Then your Team Rating changes to be closer to your MMR. A visible Matchmaker Rating would allow people to understand the system faster.

It looks like a pretty good system in general, if it works as advertised. The Team Rating is important, because Arena is a team sport, and it is important to be able to compare teams against each other.

One change that I think Blizzard could make is to ditch Personal Rating, and simply replace it with the Matchmaker Rating. This would make the Matchmaker Rating visible and required for gear. The Matchmaker Rating can also serve the same control function, preventing low ranked players from just joining high-ranked teams for gear. This would simplify the system and make it more transparent.

Edit: Any comments about "gear > class > skill" or whatever will be deleted. That argument is uninteresting and irrelevant to this post.

Divine Plea Idea

The details of the upcoming Divine Plea nerf:

Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.

I am fine with Divine Plea being nerfed. It isn't necessary for current content if you bring a full complement of 7-8 healers. You have to mix in more FoLs and Sacred Shields, but I think once paladins get accustomed to life without Divine Plea, they'll realize it was just a crutch.

That being said, I don't think this nerf is strong enough to stop paladins from using Divine Plea every cooldown. We use Divine Plea to chain Holy Lights, which has absurd amounts of overheal. Something on the order of 60-70% overheal is common. Even a 50% reduction is not going to be much of a barrier to Holy Light.

However, it's very easy to go too far, and flip Divine Plea into the "never use" category. For example, if it reduced the effectiveness of your heals by 100%, Holy would never use it, as it would be far too dangerous. Fifteen seconds of no heals is an eternity.

What I would suggest for Divine Plea is:

Divine Plea
You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec. Casting a healing spell will end this effect.

(Where healing spells include Holy Light, Flash of Light, Holy Shock, Lay on Hands, but not Sacred Shield, Seal or Judgment of Light, or Divine Storm.)

This doesn't interfere with Protection or Retribution. For Holy, Divine Plea becomes a skill move. A good Holy paladin can time the ability right to maximize regen for specific fights. If you are just spamming, you can't use it. However, if you use Divine Plea, and it turns out you misjudged, you can resume healing at full strength without seriously hurting your raid. It's less dangerous, and thus paladins will be more likely to experiment with it.

I think this "robustness of failure" is important for a healer. I don't want to wipe just because I made a mistake with Divine Plea.

As well, I think the class designers can play with this variant of Divine Plea a bit more. It's not as binary as the current version. For example, consider:

Glyph of Divine Shock
Major Glyph
Casting Holy Shock no longer ends your Divine Plea.

Usable? Maybe. At the very least it is more interesting, and Divine Plea is no longer an automatic decision, but rather an ability that you want to time for maximum effectiveness.

Edit: Added Divine Storm to the list of non-healing spells to address a concern in the comments.