Why does the Reward System Matter?

This isn't about what is a more worthwhile endeavour: PvP or PvE. In my opinion, if you want to spend endgame raiding, that's fine. If you want to spend it PvP'ing, that's fine too. This is a discussion of two fundamentally different reward systems. One where quality varies with challenge/skill (Quality System), and the other where quantity varies with challenge/skill (Quantity System).

One of these is a better system than the other. I believe that the Quality System is superior because we tend to value quality more than quantity. Because it has a better natural, even progression. And that it leads to better gameplay and encourages people to constantly improve, while the Quantity System leads to unnatural and counter-intuitive gameplay.

But clearly, many of the commenters clearly don't feel the same way. To them, the Quantity System is superior because it allows people to reach parity gear-wise faster. It also means that all progression options for your character are within reach. You'll never reach a point where you just cannot improve your character because you can't meet the challenge.

It's fairly easy to use either system in PvP or PvE. For PvP, simply slap Rating requirements on the gear. Boom, there's a Quality System in PvP.

To implement a Quantity System in PvE, we could assign ratings to each boss. Attumen would be a 1000, and Illidan would be 2400 or so. The other bosses would be scattered along the spectrum between them. Each week, a PvE player gets a rating equal to the highest rating of a boss defeated that week. For example, a raid that kills Prince Malchezzar might get a 1400 rating. On Tuesday, the Consortium gives you a certain number of Raid Points depending on your rating. You then use these raid points to purchase rewards from the Consortium.

Bosses no longer drop loot. Maybe you could get a title for defeating specific high-end bosses (Coriel the Dragonkiller Killer). The only result from downing a boss is an increase in rating, if the boss had a higher rating than your current rating. Your rating would reset to zero on Tuesday. Every so often, perhaps with the PvP Seasons, Blizzard introduces new raid gear which you can purchase.

Now, there are some fine details to work out. PvE is not quite as granular as PvP, and you can't do swaps as easily, so you have to somehow account for people who sat out that fight. And ratings would inflate over time as gear makes the challenges easier, and would have to be readjusted when new instances came out. But that's a basic Quantity System implemented in PvE.

Is that a better system than we have now? Maybe. I don't think so, however. I think it would lead to stagnation for a lot of guilds, as they would reach a "comfort level" of farming and refuse to try higher bosses on the grounds that the additional rating would not be worth the time and effort, the same way that some people prefer to lose Battlegrounds fast rather than go for a drawn-out win.

But everyone else seems to be solidly in favour of the PvP Quantity System, so maybe we should leave PvP alone and change raiding to match it.

Raider Perspective on Rewards

Perhaps a deeper explanation of the raider mindset when it comes to loot rewards would help in our discussion on PvP vs Raid Epics. Please note that this is strictly from a Loot As Reward perspective, not Loot As Investment.

For a raider, quality of loot depends on the challenge you need to overcome. The harder the challenge, the higher quality your reward is. Quantity of loot does not really change. Throughout my raiding career, I've averaged about one epic every two weeks or so. It is random, so it's not exactly one every two weeks, but it's close. The rate at which a progressing raider gains upgrades doesn't really change as content changes. What changes is the quality of the upgrades. As the raid gets better and better, as harder and harder challenges are overcome, raiders are not rewarded with more loot, they are rewarded with better loot.

So in the raider mindset, quality is the most important characteristic of loot. It represents the challenge that has been overcome. Raiders generally don't like content where the quality of reward does not match the challenge. Even bosses which are too easy for their loot are disdained (Void Reaver, most of Molten Core). Bosses which are too hard for their loot inspire a lot of forum angst.

This is diametrically opposite of the PvP situation. In PvP, the quality of the reward is fixed, and is generally whatever the highest season is. What changes is the quantity of loot. Higher skill or rating, which translates into overcoming harder challenges, is rewarded with more loot, not better loot.

From a raider mindset, this is very weird. It breaks the link between challenge and reward. And we like that link. Raiders feel that having that link is important, as it inspires people to push forward. If you don't get better as a raider, you stop progressing loot-wise. In PvP, it seems like you don't the same pressure to improve your skills. You stay level, and the loot keeps coming in, and you are able to improve your character without improving in skill. Sure you could get the loot faster, but the upgrade train never actually stops or even slows down.

Raiders actually like PvP rewards that match the "challenge = quality of reward" mindset. People with the epic flyers, or the various titles, are impressive. People with high ratings get a lot of respect.

And it's an honest question if a game should break the link between challenge and quality of reward. I kind of like that the game pushes you to continually increase your skill. I would love 5-mans or solo quests that continued to increase in challenge. Zul'Aman has been highly received by the raiding community, even though it's only a 10-man. Many pre-TBC hunters still speak fondly of their quest to get their epic bow Rhok'delar, as it was supposed to be a very challenging quest.

When the game doesn't have that push, we end up with negative behavior. We have people AFK in Alterac Valley. We have teams /dancing in Arenas so that they can finish their games quickly.

Raiding does have many problems, especially with time and organizational issues. But the basic idea that "quality of reward is linked to the challenge overcome" is not one of them.

Ask Coriel: Levelling as Protection

We interrupt the PvP / PvE war to answer some questions from Amava:

I found your site the other day while searching for advice on a talent build for my levelling Paladin alt who I'm currently viewing as a tank. My main is a relatively new lvl 70 Hunter. Some things that I could not find on the site, but would love to hear your ideas on are:
1) As a Prot Pally levels, what is a good order to invest the talent points? This is for a bit of solo work and tanking in 5-man instances. Speed of levelling is not a concern of mine as I value becoming a good tank way more than rushing to the end game.

This is a somewhat complicated question. Basically, there are a few key talents when levelling a Paladin: Spiritual Focus in Holy; Holy Shield in Protection; and Seal of Command in Retribution. Your plan should focus around which of these you want to take and when.

Protection really only comes into its own with Holy Shield at 31 points. The lower part of the tree is decent, but Holy Shield is the engine which drives the entire tree. My usual advice is not to bother with Protection until level 40 or 50. You can do well enough with the other trees for tanking purposes at the lower levels.

Spiritual Focus is an amazing talent for solo play as you can easily heal yourself while meleeing. Unfortunately, it costs 10 points in Holy, which will put off getting Holy Shield for another 10 levels. However, you don't need it if someone else will be healing you all the time.

So my usual advice is to go 10 points in Holy for Spiritual Focus, then 11 points in Ret for Seal of Command. Then level as Retribution until level 40 or 50. If you think you can get by without Spiritual Focus, respec to Protection at 40. Otherwise respec at 50 and keep SF.

Other than that the only difference between a Prot levelling build and a Prot end game build is Reckoning. Reckoning is very nice while levelling, but not all that useful at 70. I'd take Reckoning over 1H Specialization while levelling, then switch at 70.

2) Besides simply running instances and performing trial-n-error, do you have any ideas for how I can develop my tanking skills? I grew up as a beast master hunter on my first toon, and tanking is a hugely counter-intuitive concept to me. Ideally, I'd like to hear about things you do in 5-man groups while levelling up, since the full spectrum of threat-generating abilities and talents is not available until you get further and further into the talent trees.

Generally, learn the theory of tanking, especially the rules on how threat works. Take a look at:

Fortifications

This is *the* tanking guide. Although it is aimed at warriors, it is very useful for all tanks. Paladin specific resources include:

Zen Tanking
Maintankadin

After that it's pretty much just keep Holy Shield up all the time, Consecrate when necessary, and Judge Righteousness when you can. Unlike warrior tanking, the actual mechanics of paladin tanking are not that complex.

Any other advice from Protection Paladins?

Welfare Epics, Part II

As I was reading the comments to the previous post, I realized that I had ignored one of my own ideas, that of the Two Views of Loot: Loot As Reward; and Loot as Investment.

My post was entirely from a Loot as Reward perspective, while many of the comments in opposition were from a Loot as Investment perspective. So let's break the problem down and look at it from both perspectives.

Loot As Reward

Under Loot As Reward, PvP loot is far easier to obtain than PvE loot. If we contrasted a new raid guild starting out now against a new start up PvP team, the PvP would get T6/S3 quality gear first. As well, they need to put in far less time and don't have to worry about repair costs.

The quality of reward matters under Loot as Reward. You want the best reward possible, which translates to the best gear. While the new raid guild is earning T4, the new PvP team is earning S3.

And that's unfair to PvE.

Loot As Investment

However, looking at the situation through the Loot as Investment prism reveals an important difference. The raid uses T4 gear to beat T5 content, uses T5 gear to beat T6 content, and will use T6 gear to beat Sunwell. In contrast, a PvP team needs S3 gear to beat S3 teams.

Because of the level playing field, you need to be comparable gear-wise in order to have a fair fight. Otherwise, the best teams will always have a lead on the lower teams, and it will be much harder for a new PvP team to make an impact.

So a hardcore PvPer, one who wants to compete for the Gladiator title or the epic flyer, needs to get S3 as fast as they can.

Conclusions

It's important to note that under Loot as Investment, the pace of PvE rewards doesn't really matter. Victory is measured by different standards: killing bosses, or rating achieved. Unfortunately, both views of loot are valid and deserve to be taken into consideration.

If Loot as Reward did not matter, why make S2 and S3 armor? Blizzard could have stuck everyone in S1 armor and kept the playing field level. They could have tagged armor with a "PvP flag", and only allowed you to wear PvP armor in the arenas, maybe with a heavy debuff if you are wearing a piece of non-PvP armor. But Loot as Reward is important to us, and thus we get new upgrades every season.

I think it's clear from the above analysis that Loot as Reward conflicts with Loot as Investment. Loot as Reward wants a slower, smoother upgrade path. S3 must be earned, and part of that earning is gaining S2 and S1. Loot as Investment wants a faster, spikier upgrade path in order to get everyone to a level playing field.

So how can we resolve this conflict?

My thought is that different areas of the PvP spectrum are dominated by different views. Low-rated teams are more likely to be PvPing for the gear reward, and are not really in contention for any of the higher rewards. In contrast, high-rated teams are competing against each other for titles and ranking, and the armor falls into the category of investment, rather than reward.

There is an inflection point, probably somewhere around 1750 rating, where you cease to look at PvP as a source of epics only, and look at it as a competition for ranking. So I would suggest a solution that took this shift into account.

My solution would be to have two purchase prices. An S3 epic would either require (numbers made up for an example):

1) 1750+ rating and 2000 Arena points

Or

2) The equivalent S2 piece and 1500 Arena points

The idea is break up Arena rewards into the areas that they dominate. Where Loot as Investment dominates, we have a fast progression that must be earned through skill. Where Loot as Reward dominates, we have slower, more natural progression.

The key idea here--which I did not consider in my original post--is that both views of loot are valid, and both need to be considered in any potential solution.

Welfare Epics

Well, time to wade into the PvP epics, or "welfare epics", controversy. Basically, many raiders feel that PvP epics are too easily available, and are having negative effects on raiding. For example, most DPS will sport the best PvP weapon, and PvE weapons will be sharded when they drop.

First off, I am happy that PvP is another way for a player to advance their character. I like raiding, but you shouldn't have to raid in order to progress. But there are two main issues that I see with the current setup of PvP rewards.

First, the decision to make the PvP sets recoloured versions of the PvE sets was a bad one. It cheapens the accomplishments of both sides. PvP armor should look visually distinct from PvE armor.

Second, and more importantly, PvP rewards seem to lack the same sense of progression that PvE has. In PvE, you have to go through T4 content/rewards before you go to T5 content/rewards, and T5 comes before T6. You can't really skip vast amounts of content. I mean, the reason I don't have any T6 is because we're still working on T5 content.

PvP really seems to lack this. Alts in blues are now sporting S3 gear. In some manner, I think you should have to pick up some S1 gear before getting S2 gear and then S3 gear.

Someone who is in full S2 and with a 2000+ rating definitely deserves T6/S3-level gear. She shouldn't be outgeared by raiders just because she chooses to PvP. I'm just not sure that someone with a 1500 rating should be allowed to jump straight from blues to S3.

Perhaps a system where you had to have the S1 weapon and 2 pieces of S1 armor before you could purchase S2 armor would be good. Then you'd need some S2 armor and the S2 weapon before you could move on to S3. A sense of progression, of moving up steadily, rather than making large jumps.

This would also help the raiding side, as people wouldn't be able to PvP just for the weapon.

The old PvP Honor system, for all its flaws, provided this sense of progression. You got your blue boots and gloves at a certain rank, and as you rose through the ranks, you got better and better gear, eventually earning epics. But there was no sudden jump. A player with a Grand Marshal or High Warlord weapon had earned every piece of armor before that. You couldn't have a player with blues and a Grand Marshal weapon.

I think that PvPers shouldn't be allowed to skip tiers so easily. Having a more natural gear progression would also work well in PvE. A player might go from a T4 weapon, to an S1 weapon, to a T5 weapon, then to a S2 weapon, instead of jumping straight to the S2 weapon.

So those are my two issues with the current PvP Arena reward scheme. The armor needs to be more distinct from PvE armor, not just recoloured, and the rewards need a better sense of pacing and steady upgrades.

Guild Ranks and Guild Banks

Most guilds approach guild ranks as if they were in the army. They set the ranks as if they were a hierarchical chain of command, where each rank commands the ones below it.

But realistically, most guilds are small enough that there's really only one power relationship: Officers and Members. Officers command members, and that's pretty much it. The actual hierachy is very flat, regardless of the number of ranks.

So rather than looking at ranks as a chain of command, it might be more productive to look at them as mutually-exclusive "tags". These would label your membership in specific ways. For example, many raiding guilds will have "Raider", "Guild Friend", and "Alt" ranks. There's no chain of command present in those ranks, though some will be higher-ranked than others. It's just a way of labelling characters to make it easy for the leadership to sort them.

So what other ways of labelling characters might there be? One example I found on Elitist Jerks (sadly, I don't remember the guild that did this) was a guild which had the "Tank", "Healer", and "DPS" ranks. Now this is very useful way of categorizing members for a raiding guild. It allows the leadership to quickly see at a glance exactly how much of each category they have online. This is especially useful with hybrids, as you could have 3 paladins online, and each in a different category.

This setup was pretty interesting before 2.3, but with the introduction of Guild Banks, it becomes downright amazing. Permissions in the Guild Bank are tied to rank, and having different ranks for each role has a lot of benefits. For example, you could dedicate a Bank Tab for each Rank. Healers would have their own Bank Tab, dedicated to healing materials. (I forsee a lot of mana potions being stored.) Tanks would have their own tab, etc. You could even split up DPS into "Melee DPS" and "Ranged DPS" and give each of those groups their own tab.

The other advantage comes with repair costs. You can set different withdrawal limits for each role/rank, and perhaps give the tanks a larger allowance to fund their repairs. There are a lot of intriguing possibilities with this setup.

The key idea here is that treating guild ranks as a power hierarchy is possibly the most limiting way to look at ranks. Approaching ranks from a different angle can allow a guild to use their Ranks and Guild Bank much more effectively.

Who is Willy Toledo?

He appears to be a Spanish television/movie star, and he's a paladin who likes "body-to-body" fighting.

As an aside, the word "paladin" in Spanish sounds awesome.

Sadly, what jumps out at me is that once again Blizzard is promoting the paladin as a melee character. Why is it so hard for their raid/class team to understand this and shape the class accordingly?

Tidewalker Down!

I forgot to take a picture, but my guild killed Morogrim Tidewalker tonight. I got to be the pally tank for the murlocs, and even got to respec Protection.

We've been bouncing around from boss to boss for the last few months, so I'm really happy to see my guild buckle down and just work on a new boss. Hopefully this trend will continue, and we can get back to serious progression.

As for Tidewalker, I think the vast majority of the wipes were my fault, until I evolved tactics that reliably dragged the murlocs to me. We had some issues sorting out healing and positioning, but I think it finally clicked and we just took him down. We did stack the raid with an excessive amount of healing (11 healers!), so we have to learn to do the fight with a normal raid group. However, as I think I have nailed down tanking the murlocs, we should be able to do it with a more normal 7-8 healers.

It was really awesome to be able to do something other than spam heals in a raid. I've really missed just doing different things in a raid. We're probably still too healer-light for me to go Prot full time, but I hopefully that will change soon.

Ask Coriel: Seal of Command vs Seal of Blood

Larry writes:

What's your opinion on SoB versus SoC as it pertains to Retribution Paladins (especially in PvP)?

Both scale based on AP and both can crit, so they are both potentially good Retribution Seals. Now, SoB does 35% of weapon damage every hit, and SoC does 70% of weapon damage at 7 ppm. If I assume a 3.6 attack speed weapon, you get 16 attacks (rounding down) in one minute. On average 7 of those will proc SoC. If you're doing 800 damage a swing (white, non-crit), you'll do 12,800 damage. With SoC 12,800 + 3,920 = 16,720 damage in one minute, without crits and ignoring all other variables such as miss, parry, glancing, etc... If you use SoB, you get 12,800 + 4,480 = 17,280 damage in one minute.

Theoretically SoB does slightly more damage than SoC at the cost of dealing a percentage of that damage to you. SoB is also significantly cheaper in terms of mana than SoC, and in a PvP environment is (in my opinion) more reliable, though the self-damaging component is more of a negative. Another thing I'm taking into consideration is how often Vengeance can be proc'd. It's essentially 9 extra attacks a minute that can stack Vengeance. Obviously, the usefulness of this changes depending on your crit rate, but I assume most Retribution Paladins are sitting in the vicinity of 30% crit.

Now, in PvE extra crits for Vengeance isn't that great - you get 3, and it's staying up until the mob is dead. The extra procs might get you to 3 marginally faster, but as the fights are much longer and more likely to be consecutive, it's not a huge deal. However, in PvP, where you might only be fighting one or maybe two people, getting to 15% is more important. Obviously, there's times in AV where there's plentiful targets, but I think the extra attacks are worth it.

Finally, the Judgment damage. It's higher on SoB in general, but you take a decent amount of damage, and with SoC it's fairly low unless the target is stunned. Which means if you start an encounter by Repentancing a target, then you can unload a lot of damage in a few seconds, but after that, it's barely worth Judging.

For now, I'm using SoB. My Judgments are higher and the damage is more consistent. The possibility of huge bursts of damage is nice with SoC, but anyone who's been fighting and had a string of non-procs knows that frustration, especially at 3.6 attack speed.

The final consideration, which is more of a PvE thing - is down-ranking the Seals, as the Seals themselves worth off of a percentage of weapon damage; only the Judgment portion suffers from lowering the rank of the spell.

I think you are fairly correct in your assessment of SoB versus SoC for PvE. However, I'm not sure that the extra chances to crit are really worth using SoB over SoC in PvP. Sources of crits include:

1. White attacks
2. Crusader strikes
3. Seal procs
4. Judgements

You only affect one category of these by using SoB, and you give up burst damage, and you take more incoming damage. In my PvP experience, burst damage is what kills people. Not to mention that it's far more likely that people can be stunned for extra JoC damage.

As Vengeance lasts for 30s now, I think there are enough opportunities to refresh it, that using SoC over SoB will not hurt you. However, I have not really played in a high-resilience environment, so that may change things.

As for PvE, SoB is outright better than SoC. As you noted, it does more damage, and is more consistent. Additionally, the self-inflicted damage actually ends up having synergy with Spiritual Attunement, giving you mana back from splash healing, which increases your longevity. As well, SoB allows you to use the weapon with the highest DPS, as opposed to using the weapon with the highest damage range. That makes you a bit more flexible when it comes to gearing up.

Imo, SoB is a very good Seal. It is different enough from SoC that there are situations where SoC is better than SoB and vice versa. Really, Blizzard should remove Seal of Vengeance and give all paladins Seal of Blood.

Rewards, Time, and Skill

jrodman, in a comment to the previous post, remarks:

You seem against systems that measure time instead of skill, but the whole honor-marks system measures time instead of skill. The old peak-system *also* measured time instead of skill but measured how much time you spent in a single week instead of cumulatively.

I am not necessarily against systems that measure time. For example, Reputation is a very good system for rewarding time spent. What I am against is reward systems which encourage "incorrect" behavior.

If time is the behavior you want to reward, then reward time. But in Battlegrounds we don't want to reward time, we want to reward people participating in PvP. The hard part is defining participation in PvP. In particular, it's very hard to tell if a person is defending a vital node, or is merely slacking. It's very easy to over-reward attacking, which leads to all offense, no defense games.

So we use time as a proxy metric for participation. But it's not a perfect match, and the AFK'ers exploit the difference between time and participation.

Imagine if AV had zero rewards. No honor, no reputation rewards. How would people play? Most people who actually bothered to go to AV would go there to win. There would be no point to being afk (unless you're a weird passive-aggressive griefer). People who need to go afk because of real-life concerns, would still go afk.

People only go AFK in AV because of the way the reward system is structured. Multiple quick losses can be worth more than a drawn-out win. You don't lose anything for indulging in negative behavior.

Secondly, when it comes to PvP, I believe that rewards should bias to the skilled. I think the Arena system is a fairly well done system (with the exception of being able to "sell" high-ranked teams). It rewards the highly skilled, but is still attractive to the less skilled.

Arena rewards victory, and time spent. But the reward for time spent is not linear, you don't get more arena points if you put in more games. You just need to do a minimum amount of time, and then victories determine the scale of your reward.

AFK in AV

I think that while the steps Blizzard has taken to combat people who enter Alterac Valley and then sit in the cave and go Away From Keyboard are a start, there's still a ways to go to fully solve that problem. The central issue is that a person who is AFK in battle either ends up with a gain in honor, or at worst, they stay level. There is no actual penalty for being AFK.

Sure, there is an opportunity cost involved. The AFKer doesn't gain as much honor as she could. But most likely she is doing something else, a non-WoW activity such as watching TV or surfing the net, that would prevent her from actively participating. The potential scenarios are:

1. Watch TV, don't have WoW running.
2. Watch TV, sit AFK in Alterac Valley.

In the worst case, the rewards for the second scenario are equal to the rewards for the first scenario. So there is essentially no reason not to AFK while watching TV if you can.

It all comes back to Coriel's First Law of Skill:

If the metric used to measure skill cannot decrease, you are not measuring skill, but time.

Honor cannot decrease. Thus it measures time, and people will come up with ways to make it look like they are putting in the time.

The AFK Debuff needs teeth to be useful. It needs to have an actual honor penalty in order to make scenario 1 preferrable to scenario 2. Unfortunately, this might open the doors to griefing as sub-groups in AV try and declare other people AFK when they are not. An example might be a group of 70s trying to declare any non-70 in AV as AFK, in order to force them out.

Ask Coriel: Healing Shields

Kashinboner of Aman'thul writes in:

Noticed on your armory that you have the Triptych shield...I got the 33 badge healer shield already when that dropped last week. I ended up deciding not to swap and the shammy got it for his healing set.

Wouldn't mind you thoughts on the relative strengths of the two...I am trying to stack MP5 at the moment, so it was a bit of a wrench letting the 8 MP5 go.

[Triptych Shield of the Ancients]
[Light-Bearer's Faith Shield]

Triptych is probably slightly better than the Badge shield. You lose about 13 +healing in exchange for 8 mp5 and a touch more sta, int, and armor.

That being said, they're very similar, and it's arguably better for your raid for you to keep your shield and let the shammy have this shield. That way your raid has two epic healing shields rather than just one. I'm a fan of spreading the wealth and trying to minimize the amount of loot sharded or disenchanted.

Now, if the Triptych was going to be disenchanted, then grab it, but I'd let other people take it (even for offset) first.

Realistically, the next major shield upgrade is [Aegis of the Vindicator] off Magtheridon.

The New Alterac Valley

I love the new Alterac Valley. The reinforcements mechanic is excellent.

In my first game (as Alliance), we swept down to Frostwolf Village in an old-school rush. It did not work out well, as the Horde recaptured the towers and graveyards behind us, and the waiting defense shredded our offense. So we went back on the defensive, but that ill-fated attack put us behind by 100 points or so. Finally, as the game wound down, we were losing 40-150, when our second offense managed to punch through and kill Drek'thar. It was a great, nail-biting game.

The best thing about the new AV is that healing feels so much more worthwhile. Intellectually, I know that healing is quite powerful, and keeping my team alive is the best strategy, but the cost of death used to be so low that it was hard to really see, especially when I could have more fun swinging a giant hammer. In the new AV, every player I save from death is another reinforcement that we have. The cost of death has increased, and that makes healing more valuable.

The new reinforcements mechanic would go very well with Warsong Gulch. If WSG had about 50-75 reinforcements, it would stop the stalemates that drag out forever. In general, I do think battlegrounds need a time-limit. Having alternate paths to victory is also important, as it allows you a variety of strategies, but one of the paths should be a time-limit. The reinforcements mechanic is a good one, as it increases the cost of death and makes people play more strategically.

Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Karazhan

From Sussemilch of Sanctum Patria, Moon Guard (via the WoW forums):

Attumen taught us not to waste time.
Moroes taught us that everyone needs to be paying attention.
Maiden taught us that some strategies are better than others.
Opera taught us to expect the unexpected.
Nightbane taught us to look out for each other.
Curator taught us that there's a time for everything.
Aran taught us to never give up.
Illhoof taught us to think about who we bring along.
Netherspite taught us that sometimes you should just run away.
Chess reminded us to have fun.
Prince taught us that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

Ask Coriel: Improved Righteous Fury

Alfred writes in:

Love the blog! Keep up the great work. Was just wondering though...I noticed you have Imp Right Fury. Does this only apply to offensive holy spells for the increased threat or to healing spells as well? Did you just grab that for soloing? Im guessing you don't have this up while healing correct?

Righteous Fury does apply to healing spells. However, paladin heals are innately lower threat (50%) compared to priest, druids, or shaman heals. And because we run with at least three paladins, I always have Salvation on.

A paladin will have 0.5*0.7*1.9 = 67% threat. A priest with Silent Resolve would have 0.8*0.7 = 56% threat. So you have a bit more threat, but not that much more. Plus, I find it's better to be higher than the other healers on the threat meters. That way, if an add does get loose, it comes to you rather than the priest. With plate and Imp RF, you can take a couple of hits.

Keeping Imp RF on gives you 6% damage reduction all the time, which helps with splash damage. Salvation will "muffle" the effects of Imp RF. So you can keep RF up pretty much all the time in raids if you have Salvation. If you don't have Salvation, you should probably turn RF off.

If you need to watch threat, or if you don't take any splash damage, you can always turn RF off. For example, Nightbane is a fight I wouldn't run with RF, because when Nightbane lands, threat can get tricky, and I don't want to pull aggro and wipe the raid.

As well, it's useful when soloing or doing PvP, and it helps me to tank 5-mans without needing to respec. In the end, there's not a lot of better choices for those 3 talent points. I could drop Imp RF and Blessed Life and pick up Imp Might, but other than that, I don't think there's any other talents that would be more useful.

One last caveat, if you melee to keep Judgements up and you use RF, use Seal of the Crusader rather than Seal of Righteousness. You don't want extra threat from the Holy damage of Righteousness. You probably won't pull aggro, but better safe than sorry. For example, I keep Judgement of Light up on Void Reaver, so I put up Righteous Fury to help mitigate the pounding and run SotC. SotC also has the advantage of speeding up your swings, so you can spend more time healing.

Guide to Blessings

Table of Contents

I. The Basics
II. The Blessings
III. Blessing Priority for each Class
IV. How to Organize Your Paladins
V. Mods

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I. The Basics

Blessings are powerful buffs that paladins can cast on allies. In raids, Blessings are the most desired contribution of paladins, and most 25-man raids bring at least 3 paladins in order to maximize the number of Blessings.

A Greater Blessing lasts for 30 minutes, costs a reagent, and is cast upon an entire class at the same time. The normal versions of the Blessings last for 10 minutes and are cast on a individual. A paladin can only cast one Blessing on a player at one time. If she casts another Blessing, it will overwrite her first one. Each player can have a blessing from each paladin. Thus, if there are 3 paladins in the raid, each player should have 3 Blessings.

There are also three "tactical" Blessings: Protection, Sacrifice, and Freedom. These blessings last for 30s or less and will overwrite other Blessings. Paladins often forget about these Blessings, but they are useful in specific circumstances. However, the rest of this guide will only consider the long-term Blessings.

I'm a firm believer that paladins are responsible for determining which Blessing should go on which player. Multiple people crying for different Blessings is tiresome. It's okay to remind a paladin if a Blessing (especially a normal one) wears off.

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II. The Blessings

Blessing of Salvation reduces the threat generated by the target. Salvation is the first and greatest of the paladin Blessings and should almost always be the first Blessing cast. Salvation is not a safety net, it is a "damage-enabler". It allows DPS to do up to 42% more damage. They can start earlier, hit harder, and not waste time/energy/mana on threat dumps. Some DPS (rogues, mostly) will try and complain about Salvation, and request Might or Kings instead. My philosophy is that if you don't need Salvation, you aren't doing acceptable damage.

Blessing of Might adds Attack Power, both melee and ranged. It will generally add more damage than Kings, even accounting for the additional crit. Thus it is usually the second Blessing of choice for classes that rely on Attack Power.

Blessing of Wisdom adds significant mana regeneration. Again, the amount of mana returned is generally much more than the extra mana gained through Kings, and it is the second Blessing of choice for the mana-using classes.

Blessing of Light increases the healing done to the target by Paladins. It's usually the second Blessing placed on tanks, and the fourth or fifth Blessing placed on the raid. It does add a large amount of +healing, but only for the paladins, so it's value greatly depends on the number of paladins in the raid. As a rule of thumb for blessing tanks, if you have enough paladins to make Light useful, you have enough paladins to cast both Kings and Light.

Blessing of Kings increases all stats by 10%. It is the 11-point talent in the Protection tree. Most healing paladins will dip into Protection to pick up Kings. Kings is the first Blessing placed on tanks because it increases the tanks' health. It is generally the third Blessing placed on the raid. Kings is a very powerful Blessing, and is the reason most raids use at least 3 paladins. Unlike the other Blessings, Kings scales with your gear. At the very high end, it may be a better choice than Might or Wisdom.

Blessing of Sanctuary reduces incoming damage by a small amount, and deals Holy damage on a block. It is the 21-point talent in the Protection tree. It is important to note that Sanctuary's damage reduction comes before armor. Usually, only a Protection paladin picks up Sanctuary, though a Holy paladin will sometimes go 40/21/0. While it isn't a bad Blessing, it isn't as useful as the other Blessings. It is helpful on a tank handling adds that are to be AoE'd. I also prefer Sanctuary over Light as the fourth blessing on the raid, as it helps dampen the effect of splash damage, which non-paladins are usually healing.

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II. Blessing Priority for each Class

Warrior (tank) - Kings, Light, Sanctuary, Might
Warrior (DPS) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Druid (bear) - Kings, Light, Might, Sanctuary
Druid (cat) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Druid (other) - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warriors and druids usually cause the biggest hassles when organizing buffs. DPS warriors do not have ways to drop threat, so Salvation is very important to them. At the same time, putting Salvation on your tanking Warriors ends extremely badly.

As for healers, I generally prefer to put Salvation on them first. It's safest, and you don't want to lose your healers to adds, or if the tank gets incapacitated.

Hunter - Might or Wisdom, Wisdom or Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Hunter (Survival) - Kings, Might or Wisdom, Wisdom or Might, Sanctuary, Light

Because Feign Death is a complete aggro wipe available every 30s, hunters do not need Salvation. Additionally, not having Salvation will give them more control over trapping and improve the effect of Misdirect. Might will usually do more damage on short fights, but Wisdom will do more on long fights.

Hunter pets get the same Greater Blessings cast on the Warrior class. This is a source of great amusement to paladins.

If you have a Survival hunter with Expose Weakness, Kings can provide more DPS for a 25-man raid. The hunter needs at least 800 Agility for this to be the case.

Mage - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Paladin (tank) - Kings, Light, Sanctuary, Might
Paladin (DPS) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Wisdom, Sanctuary, Light
Paladin (healer) - Wisdom, Kings, Salvation, Sanctuary, Light

Paladins are all over the map as well. Since paladin heals are innately low-threat, you can get away without Salvation. As well, paladins wear plate, so if a healer must pull aggro, it's better to let a paladin do so.

Priest - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Shaman (healer/caster) - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Shaman (Enhancement) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Wisdom, Sanctuary, Light

Rogue - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warlock - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warlock pets get the same Greater Blessings cast on the Warlock class. If the warlock uses an Imp, make sure that Phase-Shift is turned off while Blessings are being cast. A phase-shifted Imp will not receive any Blessings.

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IV. How to Organize Your Paladins

Given all the conditions in the last section, setting up paladin blessings can seem like a daunting task. This is the system that I use to assign paladin blessings. You don't need the full 5 paladins. If you only have 2 or 3, just drop the remaining Blessings.

Paladin 1 (should have Kings and Improved Wisdom)
- Greater Kings on the Warriors. If you have a third paladin, cast Greater Light instead.
- Greater Wisdom on Hunters.
- Greater Salvation on everyone else.
- Cast individual Salvation on the DPS warriors.
- Cast individual Kings on the paladin or druid tanks. Again, if you have a third paladin, cast individual Light instead.
- Cast individual Kings on Survival hunters. If you have a third paladin, stay with Greater Wisdom on all hunters.

This position is the most annoying one in the raid, as you have to make sure that the DPS warriors have Salvation but the various tanks do not. If necessary, you can use Blessing of Sacrifice or Freedom to "clean off" Salvation. If you don't have any tanking warriors, you can cast Greater Salvation on the warriors.

Paladin 2 (should have Improved Might and Wisdom)
- Greater Might on Hunters, Rogues, and Warriors.
- Greater Wisdom on everyone else.
- cast individual Might on Retribution Paladins, Enhancement Shamans, and Feral Druids.

Paladin 3 (should have Kings)
- Greater Kings on everyone.

Paladin 4 (should have Sanctuary)
- Greater Sanctuary on everyone.

If you don't have a paladin with Sanctuary, just use Paladin 5

Paladin 5
- Greater Light on everyone.

If necessary, paladin 4 or 5 could also cast individual Wisdom on Retribution Paladins and Enhancement Shamans.

This system makes it easy for paladins to buff. There's only one complex buffing strategy, that of Paladin 1. All the other paladins are responsible for one or two Blessings at most. So give the extra responsibility to your paladin who is best at remembering to rebuff.

Finally, remember that Blessing priority can also change on specific fights. If there's a lot of splash damage, you might want to prioritize Kings over Might/Wisdom. If threat is not an issue in the fight, you should drop Salvation to the bottom of the priority list.

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V. Mods

I recommend the mod PallyPower to keep track of your Blessings. You can assign Greater Blessings by class, see the time remaining on each Blessing, and the range of people in each class. You can also see the Blessings being cast by other paladins who are using the mod. You can cast individual Blessing by right-clicking, allowing you to easily rebuff people who die.

Odds and Ends

Trinket Macro

Mystic Chicanery posted an absolutely beautiful macro for those of us who juggle multiple sets of trinkets. Simple and elegant. You see it, and it's an immediate "I can't believe I didn't think of that" moment.

Raiding as DPS

I got roped into a Gruul's Lair raid on Valarin. We got High King Maulgar down, and a decent attempt on Gruul. It was an interesting experience as DPS. It's a lot less stressful than healing, but there is a distinct lack of feedback. I would rank my performance as pretty poor (~400 DPS, was doing Curse of Tongues/Shadows), though to be fair I haven't put a great deal of work into Valarin. No enchants and 55 hit rating makes me sad.

The other thing I find that drops my DPS significantly is having to switch focus. I had to banish/enslave a felhound once or twice, and I'm pretty sure my DPS plummeted during that time. As a healer, I'm used to switching targets on my interface, and not selecting targets in the actual game (or even Tab-targetting). It's a skill that I really need to improve.

The other thing that was interesting was seeing a guild that had not really learned how to raid yet. I really pity the paladins in that guild. Everyone was demanding different buffs. Also, there were a couple wipes from mistakes like people accidentally aggroing mobs. I think Tharok put it well when he said that people "have not learned to respect the encounter". Simple things like running beside the wall while positioning, maintaining maximum distance from the mobs.

The best part, though, was that my repair bill was less than 5 gold.

A'lar the Phoenix God

My guild is attempting A'lar at the moment. We have Phase 1 down, and are working on Phase 2. It's a neat encounter. One of the biggest things in this encounter for healers is range. Trying to maintain range while tanks are switching off is pretty hard. I might have to go get a UI mod which visually marks people who are out of range.

Advertising

I'm experimenting with Google Adsense, and have put an ad on the sidebar. I think it doesn't clash with the visuals too greatly. Adsense is fairly easy to use. My biggest concern is that I can't seem to block goldselling/powerlevelling ads. As it isn't really very lucrative, I'll probably end up taking it down in a week or so.

Time

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between Time and Difficulty in an MMO. Which should be rewarded more: beating a difficult challenge, or beating a challenge which requires a lot of time? Is there an equivalence point? Does it matter if game time matches real-time? Is there a difference between a task which can be accomplished in 5 hours at a stretch or one where you have to spend an hour a day for 5 days? Which of those two options should get a greater reward?

Derived Stats and Spell Damage

The damage done by a spell or special ability (non-crit) generally takes the form of:

TotalDamage = BaseDamage + Coefficient * PowerStat

For melee attacks and abilities, the PowerStat is Attack Power. For spells, the PowerStat is +damage or +healing.

What's interesting here is that Attack Power (AP) is built into the game from the very beginning. It's a derived stat, meaning that it's value comes from other primary stats. Different classes use different primary stats to boost AP. Warrior, paladins, and shamans boost AP through Strength. Rogues and Hunters boost AP through Agility. Druids use a mixture depending on what form they take.

In contrast, spell damage is tacked on to this system, and only starts appearing at the high levels. Even though it behaves in the same manner as AP, it is not a derived stat, but a completely separate one. It's also different in that it's actually a collection of PowerStats, each boosting a specific spell school.

In my opinion, the Attack Power system works better than the spell damage system. It's simpler and more elegant. Additionally, it works with the five primary stats, and allows different classes to value gear in a different manner. A ring with +Agi means different things to a warrior, a rogue, or a hunter.

It's probably too late for WoW now, but reworking spell damage to mirror Attack Power would have a lot of benefits. Let's call the new PowerStat Spell Power (SP). For example, mages and priests could get Spell Power from Spirit, while warlocks and druids could get Spell Power from Intellect.

This immediately differentiates the classes. You could tweak the rate at which Spirit or Intellect is converted into SP and balance each class without seriously affecting itemization. For example, maybe 1 Spirit = 3 SP for Mages, but 1 Intellect = 2 SP for Warlocks.

The other major advantage comes with paladins and shamans. The melee-magic hybrids. For these two classes you could have Strength convert to Spell Power as well as Attack Power. This would mean that both sides of the class would scale with the same stat.

We don't really need a power stat for each separate school of magic. The only place where it's significantly used for damage spells is the tailoring epic sets. 90% of the other damage gear in the game only uses +damage/healing.

As for +healing, let's pretend that you get twice as much +healing as +spell damage. (It's not exactly twice, but it's pretty close.) So 1 Spell Power = 2 Heal Power. Taking a look at the equation above, we can go:

TotalDamage = BaseDamage + Coefficient * PowerStat
TotalHeal = BaseHeal + Coefficient * ( HP )
TotalHeal = BaseHeal + Coefficient * ( 2 * SP )
TotalHeal = BaseHeal + ( Coefficient * 2 ) * SP

Instead of using a different PowerStat for healing spells, we can use the same PowerStat and simply double the coefficent on healing spells. It accomplishes the exact same thing!

Converting the spell damage system into a mirror of the Attack Power system would accomplish many goals. It would simplify the number of stats on gear. It would allow you to differentiate classes by getting them to place different values on the primary attributes. It makes the primary attributes more valuable for spellcasters. It allows melee-magic hybrids to scale with one stat, rather than chasing two. It causes both offensive and defensive spells for healers to scale at a similar rate, rather than having extremely powerful healers who can't hurt a fly.

Housecleaning

I've upgraded to Blogger's new templates. As part of this upgrade I've decided to drop the pseudonym "GSH" and simply use my real name when signing posts. I'm not really sure why I'm doing this. To be honest, the double layer of indirection (Coriel -> GSH -> Rohan) was getting a bit weird, especially when responding to emails.

I'm totally fine with signing a blog post or a forum message anonymously, but it somehow seems wrong to sign an email as GSH. It may be the fact that a blog or forum post is a one-to-many relationship, while an email is one-to-one.

Since I'm using my real name now, I figure I might as well use a more real email address as well. It'll save me the trouble of actually remembering to check the one I made specifically for this website.

Other than that, the upgrade broke my essential posts section, so I'll have to rebuild that. It doesn't look like I'll be able to easily do it in a nice compact form for the various series of posts.

If you notice anything that has changed for the worse, or is missing, please post a comment and I'll try to fix it.

Server Mergers

Several people, including Tack, have suggested server mergers as a solution to the problem of consolidating talent. I don't think this will solve the problem. I've been watching the show Numb3rs lately, and I feel inspired to make an analogy which may not actually reflect reality or mathematics.

<Professor Charles Eppes>

Imagine that a WoW server is like a bucket with a hole in it. The people on the server are like drops of water. If you fill up the bucket, water leaks out, and the bucket eventually empties.

A high-end raiding guild is like a plug. You put the plug in the hole, and the bucket stops leaking water.

Merging two low population servers is like pouring water from one leaky bucket into another leaky bucket. The amount of water increases, but the increase is only temporary.

The bucket still has the hole and, without the plug, the bucket will still eventually empty.

</Professor Charles Eppes>

Might work a little bit better with blurry visuals and random fluid dynamic equations being written out with chalk.

The analogy is crude, but you can see why I believe server mergers won't fix the problem. If you're lucky, a server merger may result in the creation of a hardcore guild which revitalizes the server. But that's not guaranteed, and the option for the hardcore to transfer is still very attractive.