Thoughts on Warhammer Online

I'm not in the Warhammer Online Beta, but I've been watching the various sites post information avidly. Here are some of my thoughts:

Open Beta

You have to pre-order the game to get into the Open Beta. Seriously?

It's a weird decision, because it's a very short Open Beta, so it's more like advertising, only you're advertising to people who've already purchased the game. Seems odd to me, but whatever.

Grouping

The single most interesting thing about Warhammer appears to be their approach to grouping. Open Groups and Public Quests (see Tobold for more info) are extremely unique mechanics. I've posted before about social aversion to asking strangers to group. By eliminating that barrier, grouping might become a lot more common.

I think how loot is handled will be issue that makes or breaks Warhammer's grouping system. We all know the issues with ninjas in WoW; what's it going to be like when the ninja can join your groups without permission? If ninjas become a big concern, then all groups will be closed, and all the advantages of an open system will be lost.

The other loot issue I see is how Public Quest loot is distributed. They use a /roll system with modifiers depending on your performance. There are three concerns here.

First, performance is often very hard to quantify. Already sites like Massively are advising classes to AoE as much as possible in order to push themselves to the top of the meters. I'm sure the tanks will be overjoyed by these tactics. Essentially, it's the problems with damage meters and healing meters obsession in WoW, only people actually get rewarded by being at the top, even at the expense of the group.

Second, it seems like the rich get richer in this system. The better your gear, the more powerful you are, which means you're more likely to top the meters, and get the best reward. That means you're even more likely to top the meters in the next event. It's interesting that almost all player-driven loot systems are designed to prevent this, to spread loot more evenly.

Third, Random + Modifier still has all the disadvantages of a random system. You can be the best player in several PQs and still roll terribly. Given that many PQs will happen, it is probable that some poor sap (probably me, knowing my relationship with Lady Chance) will end up with a terrible loot streak.

Healing

Healing looks very interesting as well. There are three types of healers: pure healers, healers who get bonuses to damage spells if they cast healing spells and vice versa; and melee-healers.

I predict the that the second type of healer will end up as pure healbots. As Keen is finding out, the real barriers to mixing healing and damage are time and resource costs. In Keen's words, "If you’re not healing constantly then people will die. If people die because you were doing damage... it gets ugly."

So, the melee healer is what is really unique here. They look very unusual, as you have to hit the enemy in order to build up the necessary resources to heal people. Despite the fact that I really should know better than to roll a healer, I'm strongly considering trying a warrior-priest when Warhammer comes out.

Mechanics and Gameplay

The basic mechanic for every class seems to be something like Rogue's Energy. This is a very intriguing idea. The Toughness stat also looks like a nice twist on basic combat mechanics.

However, issues like these give me pause.

PvP

Keen has a really good video showing off an in-game siege. It looks very exciting. On the other hand, you can't help but notice that everyone is pretty much in the same position at the end of the video that they were in at the start of the video. (*Memories of 16-hour old-school AV matches rise up*)

Conclusions

Remember that I am not in the Beta, and am just commenting on the info that other people are talking about. Warhammer looks like a very neat game, with a lot of interesting ideas and takes on the MMO genre.

However, the whole "must pre-order to get into the Open Beta" thing is making me slightly nervous, especially after the whole Age of Conan debacle. In the end, I think I'll probably pick up Warhammer two to four weeks after it is released, and more information floods the Internet.

As a complete aside, I don't understand how people say that MMOs are too expensive to try out. They cost the same as normal game, and you get a free month, which is more than enough time to get in some decent hours. It's more or less the same price as buying a single-player game that you ended up not liking.

Balancing Around Fewer Healers

In a comment to the previous post, Green Armadillo asks:

Rohan, I'm curious, how do you answer the enrage timer question? I don't disagree with anything that you've said, but the Crab does have a point; it's hard to design an encounter for 5 healers that isn't easier with 7 healers, unless you put a harsh and unforgiving DPS check on it.

This is my take on encounter design and raid make-up. To start, the number of tanks a raid needs is determined by the specific encounter, and is really independent of any any other concerns. Generally, the number of tanks is fixed. You need as many tanks as there are things to tank, or how the tank rotation plays out, or Hateful Strikes work, etc. This is all very encounter-specific.

The mix of healers and DPS is determined by two competing constraints: the minimum raid DPS required; and the amount of damage done by the encounter. You need to take enough healers to heal the damage done, and you need to take enough DPS in order to meet the minimum raid DPS required.

The minimum raid DPS requirement can be determined by a lot of elements in the fight. The very basic requirement comes from the boss' health and the enrage timer. For example, you have to do 4.75 million damage to Void Reaver in 10 minutes. That's a minimum requirement of 7920 DPS from your raid. Another example would be the amount of DPS required to kill an Astral Flare on Curator before the next Astral Flare spawns. High minimum DPS requirements are what make fights challenging for DPS players, and push them to improve their skills.

The damage done by the encounter is pretty obvious, but there are a couple of wrinkles. First off, though most of the damage is done to the tanks, there's a limit to how much tank damage is actually healable. There's a point where the tank will just get gibbed before the next heal can land. So encounters start doing more and more damage to the raid, like in upper T6 and Sunwell content.

However, the number of healers and DPS is related. The easiest way to meet the minimum raid DPS requirement is to drop healers, and add extra DPS. In our Void Reaver example, with 15 DPS, individual DPS needs to average 528 DPS (over the entire fight, remember that ranged is dodging orbs). If you can get by with one less healer, and run with 16 DPS, the individual average drops to 495 DPS.

So the basic tension in encounter design is between the minimum raid DPS required and the damage done by the encounter. If the minimum DPS requirement was close to zero and the damage done was high, the optimum raid would be all healers, as you could guarantee that they would keep the raid alive and--eventually--kill the boss. Similarly, if the damage done was zero, and minimum DPS requirement was high, the optimum raid would be all DPS.

At this point, it doesn't seem like it would be hard to balance around a lower number of healers. You simply increase the minimum raid DPS required, and decrease the damage done by the encounter. But there's a second wrinkle to the number of healers required: you need enough healers to cover the "gaps" in healing when some healers need to pause healing, and to cover when a healer dies.

If there are fewer healers, a single healer death is more likely to lead to a wipe. For example, doing Karathress with only 5 healers might be hard, because you'd have 1 healer on each tank, and 1 healer on the raid. Losing any one healer will probably result in a wipe. But then again, tanks suffer much the same problem. In most encounters, losing your tank is a wipe.

The easiest way to explain covering the "gaps" in healing is to look at the Terestian Illhoof fight in Karazhan. Illhoof is a fairly hard fight to learn with only two healers, especially when a raid is still mostly in blues. If you only have two healers, and one gets Sacrificed, the remaining healer has to keep the main tank, aoe tank, and the Sacrificed healer (who is taking 1500 dps!) alive all by herself. And if the Sacrificed healer dies, it's pretty much a guaranteed wipe if the remaining healer gets Sacrificed. This gets easier once the raid gets better better gear and the DPS is able to blast the chains quickly, but when you're learning the fight, it is much easier to do Illhoof with three healers.

A lot of fights have similar mechanics, where you take extra healers to cover the case where multiple healers are incapacitated. For example, Tidewalker is probably healable with 5-6 healers. However, if 2 or more healers are Watery Graved, that's a wipe. You take extra healers to cover that probability. Leotheras is similar, as is Teron Gorefiend.

The best solution to this issue is to prevent healers from being affected by encounter elements such as these. For example, if Illhoof never Sacrificed healers, it would be very easy to balance Illhoof around 2 healers. If Tidewalker never Watery Graved healers, you could balance Tidewalker around 5 healers easily. These effects often exclude the tank (where the tank is usually considered to be the person highest on the threat meter). You could use a similar metric to identify the healers. The healers are the top 5 people on the healing meter. That's probably correct 99% of the time, especially once you get about 30s into the fight.

Of course, that means that healers never get to enjoy some of the fun mechanics in certain fights. For example, killing her Inner Demon on Leotheras is a lot of fun for a healer because it's very different from her standard gameplay. But once you identify who the healers are, it becomes possible to include them without completely randomly hosing the raid. For example, right now Tidewalker randomly selects four of {healer, DPS} to be Watery Graved. This means that anywhere from 0 to 4 healers could be Graved (though 3-4 healers being Graved is highly improbable). But if you identified the healers, Tidewalker could randomly select 1 healer and 3 DPS. Guaranteeing that only one healer is ever Graved at a time would make it much easier to balance around fewer healers.

To sum up, the basic balance between healers and DPS is governed by the minimum raid DPS required and the damage done by the encounter. These numbers should be able to be balanced around a lower number of healers. However, right now most encounter elements do not differentiate between healers and DPS. Because healers and DPS are targeted equally by many effects, more healers are required to cover the improbable cases where healers are disproportionately targeted. If healers and DPS were identified and targeted separately, then this factor would go away. Identifying healers should be fairly easy using the standard healing meters, and identifying DPS should be easy via the damage meters.

Identifying healers and DPS, and treating them differently, could also lead interesting encounter elements that challenge healers and DPS differently. For example, consider a fight where the DPS gets separated from the healers into different rooms, and each team is faced with a unique challenge. The healers might have to kill their mob quickly, while the DPS might have to kite and kill their mob without getting damaged. In addition to reducing the number of healers required, identifying healers could even lead to even more interesting and varied boss fights.

Blizzard on Healers in Raids

Josh sent me a link to the following statement by Ghostcrawler (Blizzard dev) on the beta forums:

Ideally around 2 of each class should be in a raid. It can't be 2.5 because most raids require 7-8 healers and not 5. Changing this would be pretty difficult as it would mean adding stiffer enrage timers and other penalties for bringing too many healers. Shamans, paladins and druids (and maybe priests) are probably going to be closer to 3 per raid because their specs are so different and one of them can heal. The question remains of who goes home if the DK comes in? Though a just as valid question is who goes home if the moonkin comes.

First off, Ghostcrawler is probably right in that it is harder to create interesting encounters with fewer healers.

However, my problem is that it doesn't look like that many people want to heal. In my experience, healers are almost always the bottleneck in recruiting, and they burn out the fastest. Then the top tier guilds recruit healers from the lower tier guilds, and that means the lower tier guilds have even harder time picking up new healers.

At 8 healers, that means that each class uses 2 of their 3 spots on healers. 2 of 3 paladins are Holy, 2 of 3 shamans are Resto, etc. There's only one spot left for a non-healing spec. Want to be a Prot Paladin? Better hope there isn't a Ret paladin in the raid.

The basic fact is that the number of healers Blizzard wants to balance around simply does not match the number of players willing to heal. That contributes to the instability of raiding, and makes it harder for people to actually raid.

The thing is that a lot of people won't adjust to the healer requirements. If it's a choice between healing or not raiding, a lot of people will choose not raiding and end up quitting. Healing is simply "not fun" for many people, and trying to force people to do something that is not fun "for the good of the raid" will drive them out of the game.

Lack of healers causes guilds to fall off the path of raiding. If encounters were less interesting, yes, that would be a loss. But the last three years have shown the reality of healing, and Blizzard needs to balance around reality, not an unsustainable ideal.

WotLK Beta - Healing Options

One of the complaints about the downranking change is that Holy Paladins now don't have enough heals to do their job. I think this concern is overstated, as we actually have more options in Wrath.

The mainstays:

• Flash of Light - small, efficient heal



• Holy Light - powerful, expensive heal

Upgraded (you should take a second look at these):

• Judgement of Light - JoL now scales, and actually does a fair bit of healing. Additionally, Judgements of the Pure now gives a nice haste bonus for Judging.



• Holy Shock - Blizzard is really pushing Holy Shock. The cooldown has been dropped significantly, it's decently powerful and reasonably efficient. It's falling somewhere in between FoL and HL at the moment. In addition, if HS crits, you get an instant Holy Light with Infusion of Light.
  
  Some posters at EJ are proposing that Blizzard intends us to melee-heal. Essential heal with Holy Shock and then sit on the instant HL while regenerating mana with Seal of Wisdom. We would do this instead of cast-cancelling Holy Light. I'm in the odd position of arguing that this is not intended, as you can't melee-heal with Holy Shock unless you mouse-over macro the Holy Shock.
  
  Still it's a possible option, and even without the melee component, sitting on an instant HL instead of cast-cancelling has a lot of potential.



• Hand of Sacrifice - Adding this one for completion's sake, the fact that Sacrifice no longer removes Blessings makes it a far more useful option.

New spells:

• Beacon of Light - An AoE heal. Not very impressive yet, but hopefully will be tuned up.



• Sacred Shield - As this is a level 80 spell and not available in Beta, this is the big unknown in paladin healing so far. If it scales well, and if Blizzard fixes the issues with rage/mana generation and shields, this could be powerful.

We do have a lot more options for healing in the expansion than we do now. Maybe not as many as a priest or druid, but I think we should have all the tools we need.

Downranking is Dead!

Blizzard has finally killed off downranking spells in the latest WotLK Beta build. All spells now cost a percentage of base mana. (Not total mana, base mana, which is the mana you have if naked and untalented.) So all ranks of spells cost more or less the same at all levels.

I am estatic about this change. I've been posting about downranking being a problem since 2006. Costs are the single most important part of game balance, and being able to evade costs has always led to degenerate gameplay.

To me, the best thing about WotLK is that Blizzard is finally beginning to take costs, both mana/rage/energy costs and time costs, seriously. This should lead to a stronger, more balanced, and more fun game.

Of Loot Council and Legendary Bows

By now, you've probably heard the story of how the guild Vicarious of Area 52 gave the legendary bow [Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury] to a rogue (who had been in the guild since the beginning) over two hunters (who had joined a couple months ago).

Like most respondents, I think that this was a bad decision. However, it's worth looking at why this is a bad decision.

To me, the sticking point is that the guild used Loot Council to distribute loot. I have said before that there are Two Views of Loot: Loot as Reward; and Loot as Investment.

Loot Council is almost pure Loot as Investment. The general idea is that because of the random nature of loot drops, a "fair" loot distribution system will have occasionally assign loot in a sub-optimal manner. So a trusted group of individuals directs the loot to the people who get the most use out of it. Loot Council essentially opts for a deliberately unfair distribution of loot in order to maximize the power of the raid. This is pure Investment, and is as far from Loot as Reward as it is possible to get.

The trouble with Vicarious' decision is that it was a Reward decision, not an Investment decision. And it was an entirely reasonable Reward decision. Yet their entire loot structure prioritizes Investment over Reward. If there had been another instance after Sunwell, Vicarious would have never given the bow to the rogue.

That's actually an interesting problem for Investment systems. What do you do when you no longer need to invest? Do you switch to a Reward system, or keep distributing as if you were Investing for a future instance. Of course, very few guilds have this problem, so it's mostly a non-issue.

I think it is a bad idea to build a guild around one model, and suddenly switch to the other model for one or two decisions. If you are Investment, make decisions based on Investment. If you are Reward, make decisions based on Reward.

The Recruit-A-Friend Program

You've probably seen the buzz on Blizzard's new Recruit-A-Friend system. If you recruit a friend, you get:

1. An exclusive in-game zhevra mount.
2. A free month of play-time.

While the zhevra is interesting, these incentives are pretty standard for referring someone. The really thought-provoking part is that both accounts (veteran and new player) are linked, and there are some in-game benefits:

1. Characters on both accounts can summon each other once per hour.
2. While adventuring with your linked friend/family member, you will each gain triple experience.
3. For every two levels the new player earns, the new player can grant one free level-up to a lower-level character played by the veteran player

Some posters I've seen have spun this as Blizzard catering to multi-boxers, or rushing new people through old content so they can hit the level cap. While this may be true on some level, I think Blizzard is aiming for something different. I think this is their effort to solve the Paradox of Levels, as immortalized in this comic from Penny Arcade.

This is especially problematic in this situation as the veteran player is very likely to have a main high-level character. Basically, Blizzard is trying to encourage the new player and veteran to team up as much as possible and level up together. The veteran is unlikely to jump ahead, as she will probably revert to playing her main character when the new player is not online. And if the new player jumps ahead, she can boost the veteran's low level character up with the free levels.

Playing together with a friend is probably the strongest incentive that will cause a new player to stick with the game. This system encourages the veteran and new player to play together until close to the endgame, at which point the new player has caught up to the veteran's main character, and levels have ceased to matter.

I wonder if this is a potential forerunner of more formal "levelling pacts", or mechanisms which encourage groups of friends to stick together near the same level, and keep people from being left behind.

Revamping Paladins by Upgrading Abilities

In a previous post I mentioned how much I like having 3 offensive abilities with 6-10s cooldowns, like the current WotLK Retribution and Protection trees have. I've been thinking about it, and my fondness for that structure and pacing has only increased. I think it would be really nice if the baseline paladin played like that.

We are a long way from the days of 15s Judgements, but still, levelling a paladin is much less interactive than any other class. I do like how paladins have a more moderate pace than rogues and warriors, but only using Judgements until level 40 is a bit too boring.

However, one of the problems with giving the baseline paladin new abilities is that when the paladin gets new abilities in the talent trees, she gets new buttons to press during combat. This leads past the sweet spot of 3 abilities, and into more warrior/rogue button-mashing territory.

Then the solution hit me. Instead of giving the paladin entirely new abilities in the talent trees, the new abilities should be upgrades and replace the baseline abilities in the paladin's rotation.

WoW doesn't use a lot of upgraded abilities. New abilities and spells are usually additive, meaning you often use them in addition to your current abilities, as opposed to instead of your current abilities. There are some replacement abilities, however. Devastate replaces Sunder Armor, Mangle replaces Claw. And there are a few when levelling. Cleanse replaces Purify.

So what I was thinking for the paladin class is that the baseline paladin gets three active combat abilities before level 12 or so:

1. Judgement. Has a 10s cooldown and is like the WotLK version.
2. A weak Strike (Holy Strike?) with a 6s cooldown.
3. A weak Cleave/melee-AoE style ability with a 10s cooldown.

This base paladin would play very similarly to the WotLK Retribution or Protection paladins, at least in terms of buttons pushed during combat.

Then as you go down the trees, you get new abilities that replace the second two baseline abilities. These abilities are tailored to the specific talent tree. Each ability would share their cooldown with the baseline ability, ensuring that the paladin would switch to the upgraded ability without changing the pacing of the class.

For example, in Retribution, the paladin would upgrade Holy Strike to Crusader Strike at level 40. At level 50, Divine Storm replaces the baseline Cleave. In some ways, each ability performs the same function as the previous ability, only tailored to the spec.

In Protection, Holy Shield replaces the Cleave, and Hammer of the Righteous would replace the Holy Strike.

In Holy, Holy Shock would replace the Strike. It's a 6s ranged strike, with a healing component. We'd need a new ability to replace the Cleave, but it would be something that hit multiple enemies and yet had a healing or ranged component to it.

The basic idea is that all the Strikes share a cooldown, and all the Cleaves share a cooldown. This way the pacing of paladin combat is maintained, the baseline gameplay isn't so boring, but each spec gets upgrades and a unique playstyle, and ends up in more or less the same position as current design.

Ask Coriel: Defeating a Warlock

Paul writes in:

During PvP, what do I do when encountering a Warlock face to face? Fight or flee. My past experiences have taught me that they whoop my ass. How can we best them?

I'm not really that good at PvP, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Warlocks are kind of paladin kryptonite. It's pretty hard to beat a good warlock, especially if they have a felhunter out. Try to kill or fear the pet first. Remember you can use Turn Evil and Exorcism on warlock pets.

Other than that, you just have to wear them down. Heal early and often, with Flash of Light to save mana. Save your divine shield for when you are loaded down with DoTs, as it will remove all of them. If the warlock doesn't have Shadow Embrace or Unstable Affliction, Cleanse off the DoTs, otherwise just heal through the damage. Get the PvP trinket so you can break a Fear. Remember that you can Cleanse Drain Life and Drain Mana.

All in all, it's a pretty hard fight, especially if the warlock is good.

Any other tips for Paul, especially from people who PvP regularly?

WotLK Beta - Seal of Vengeance trick

In Wrath, special attacks like Crusader Strike will proc Seals. If the attack hits multiple people, the Seal will proc for each person (or have a chance to proc for those Seals which aren't a guaranteed proc).

This is pretty amusing with Seal of Vengeance and Hammer of the Righteous. HotR hits 3 targets every 6 seconds. If you are running SoV, you can actually build full SoV stacks on all three targets, refreshing them every 6 seconds.

WotLK Beta - Soloing with Holy

Holy doesn't look like a solo-friendly spec. My Holy gear is roughly one Tier higher than my Ret or Prot gear, but Holy seemed a lot slower than the other two.

Part of it is that there is a limited number of abilities to use while soloing.

Holy (2): Judgement, Holy Shock
Protection (3): Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield
Retribution (3): Judgement, Crusader Strike, Diving Storm

While the 6s cooldown on Holy Shock is a lot better than the current cooldown, combat as Holy is still pretty boring. Judge, Shock, wait 6s seconds, Shock again. I suppose I could have worked in Consecration, but it seemed like a waste.

At 75, paladins get a new ability, Shield of Righteousness (slams the target for 200% of Block Value as holy damage). I suppose that can help out Holy, though it will hit for much less as Holy has no Strength or Block Value.

In my opinion, I really like the way the paladin plays when she has 3 decent offensive abilities with 6-10s cooldowns, as with the current WotLK Retribution and Protection. It's not as frantic as a rogue or warrior. It's measured, but it's not boring. You're always planning your next move, but you're not waiting for long cooldowns.

It's sort of sad that you have to wait for level 40 (Holy, Prot) or 50 (Ret) before you get your second low-cooldown offensive ability, and level 60 (Prot,Ret) before you can get your third.

Again, though, this is just soloing. I haven't tried Holy in groups yet.

WotLK Beta - Soloing with Protection

Protection is a lot of fun for solo questing. It's not as fast as Ret, but it's pretty good. I used Judgement, Hammer of the Righteous and Holy Shield, and easily went through 1-3 mobs at a time. I didn't feel it was worth using Consecrate for so few mobs. Prot is a little mana-hungry, but I went JoL + SoW, and still killed fairly fast while keeping my health and mana pretty high.

The caveat to this is that I did not use Prot gear. I used my Ret gear + a green 1H hammer from one of the first WotLK quests (~84 dps) + an Illidari Runeshield. When I tried with my epic Prot tanking gear, it just felt terrible. I think you really need a decent amount of strength to make the new Protection work. I'd probably get the new Cobalt blacksmithing gear as soon as possible, and replace all my precious epics.

I think I'm probably going to level as Protection in WotLK. It's solid for soloing, and I can tank instances on the way up.

WotLK Beta - Random Notes

Quick bullet points:

• As predicted, Art of War was changed. Overall, Ret is still awesome, but no more 20K crits.



• Seal of Righteousness is really strong at the moment. It's scaling a bit too well with AP. In full Ret gear, with a Ret spec, SoR is looking like my highest DPS seal. Unfortunately, it's our levelling seal for 1-60, where we don't have any SP, so Blizzard will have to be very careful with it. The only solution I can think of is to have a breakpoint in the AP scaling. I.e. the first 1000 AP gets 10% scaling, but all AP after that only gets 5%.



• Divine Storm's graphic is awesome! It's pretty much the single best spell effect in the game. It's like a storm of hammers swirls around you.



• Seals now last for 2 minutes. However, Judgments now invoke a global cooldown, as they should.



• Pets and mounts are sort of spells now. At least, right-clicking the pet or mount causes you to "learn" the pet/mount and puts it in a pane on your character sheet. This is pretty neat, and frees up a ton of bag space. Plus, it's really easy to review your collection. The pane has a display so you can see what each pet looks like.



• There's a built-in calendar now. You can schedule raids, and do sign-ups. It's somewhat bare-bones, but it covers all the basics. In my view, this is a huge step forward for new guilds. In many ways, this simple change has the potential to be the best change for endgame that Blizzard has introduced.



• Potions grant a debuff now that prevents you from drinking another potion until the end of combat. This puts an end to chain-potting, and returns potions to an emergency-use item.
  
  One interesting thing about this change I found is that a lot of casual commenters are predicting that the hardcore would be unhappy with this change, as it makes the endgame more accessible to casuals (no more farming for pots). Meanwhile, at EJ, pretty much everyone is cheering the change. The point is that a lot of the things that the casuals don't like about endgame, the hardcore also do not like. However, the difference is that the hardcore is willing to put up with these negatives, to do whatever they deem necessary to be successful.
  
  On the one hand, that's good, as they're willing to work hard for a goal. If killing a boss requires chain-potting, they will chain-pot. On the other hand, they do lack a sense of proportion about things, and things end up balanced around the extremes, rather than closer to the center. Raid encounters end up balanced assuming that everyone is chaining potions.



• Back to paladins, apparently Consecration and Exorcism now scale with AP as well as SP. The biggest problem with current prot gear is that there is very little strength on it, and that makes it hard to judge how good the the Protection tree is. I'm strongly considering junking all my Prot epics and trying the new Cobalt blacksmithing armor (+Str, +Sta, +def). I also need to find a good DPS 1H weapon. Maybe I'll try Ret Gear + 1H/Shield, and see how that works for general soloing.

WotLK Beta - Retribution

I feel sorry for Retribution paladins. Every beta, Blizzard overpowers Retribution, and ends up scaling it back for live, thus disappointing all the paladins who are watching eagerly.

WotLK appears to be continuing that trend. Retribution is sick right now. I'm testing on Quel'Danas, and level 70 mobs die instantly. Judgement, Crusader Strike, Divine Storm, dead mob. I'm not even in that amazing gear. I'm in T4 with a Gorehowl. I'd hate to see what the T6/Sunwell people are capable of.

So far, Ret is extremely good for soloing. Judgements of the Wise returns a fair bit of mana to the paladin. Basically, right now there is close to zero downtime with Retribution.

The biggest Retribution news out of beta are the massive 15K - 20K Judgement of Command crits Retribution is capable of. This is not an exaggeration. My best crit so far was 12.5K, and that was without trying. In better gear, pop Avenging Wrath and trinkets, and I can easily see coming close to 20K.

What's really weird about these crits is that they are somewhat controllable. The Art of War is procced off a Crusader Strike. So you wait for Art of War to proc, then stun and Judge Seal of Command. And since Fanaticism gives you +25% crit chance, that puts the chance for Command to crit at over 50%. Between the Art of War proc and Fanaticism, this burst is oddly reliable.

All in all, I think Retribution is headed for a nerf. And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Paladin forums.

The First Thing You Should Do In WotLK

The very first thing you should do in WotLK is roll a Death Knight and do the Death Knight starting questline.

The DK starting questline is like a prologue or introduction to the expansion. It sets up a couple of very interesting storylines to be revealed in the expansion. After you finish the questline, you can switch back to your main character or continue with the Deathknight as you please.

I'm not really impressed with the Deathknight class itself (I'll probably expand on this in a later post), but I strongly suggest you do the DK quests first before heading to Northrend.

Crafting, Gold, and Balance

Right now, there's a trend--especially at the high end of raiding and PvP--of characters taking two crafting professions. They do this in order to get the "perks" from each profession slot, maximizing their character's potential.

This has some interesting economic ramifications. There are now fewer gatherers, and more crafters, so the raw materials have become scarcer, and prices have increased significantly. To combat this, Blizzard is introducing perks for the gathering professions in WotLK. For example, Mining gets a +Stamina bonus.

However, some people aren't happy with this, because levelling crafting professions is an expense, while levelling gathering professions gains you money. They feel that because they put in the greater expense, they should get a greater reward.

The problem with this is that money or gold is really irrelevant when it comes to character balance. If Leatherworking gives more of a boost to your characters stats than Mining, Mining will be dropped by the serious players, regardless of how much money it brings in.

It's like there are two mutually exclusive choices. A crafting profession can either be useful to your character (I.e. it has benefits that cannot be provided by another crafter), or it can be profitable. If it is useful, everyone will take it, increasing the supply, increasing the costs, and reducing the profits. If it is not useful, then fewer people will take it, increasing scarcity and making it more likely you can make money with it.

For example, if Blizzard really wanted players to be able to sell crafted goods for profit, they should increase the perks for the gathering professions until they are noticeably better than the perks from crafting. This means that most serious players will drop crafting professions and go double gatherer. This means that there will be plentiful supply of raw materials. Then Blizzard should have crafted BoE recipes of good quality available. Plenty of raw materials + fewer crafters = lots of income.

But would you take that trade? More gold in exchange for lower character prowess? I think that most people won't. That it will just lead to complaining by everyone. So Blizzard will try and balance perks between the crafting and gathering professions.

Unless the cost is extremely exorbitant, gold costs never hold players back. Respec costs haven't, costs to level professions haven't, repair costs haven't, alchemy costs back in WoW 1.0 didn't. You cannot count on gold costs to balance character prowess. All significant gold costs really do is cause players to spend more time farming, complaining, and cause players to drop out of the game when they can't keep up.

Edit: This post is really the confluence of two somewhat-related ideas: gold costs do not affect game balance; and crafting can be useful or profitable, but not both. I probably should have tried to separate them out a bit better.

WotLK Beta - Protection

I got fed up with trying to figure out Judgement of Command, so I specced Protection to try out some new talents. Some thoughts in no particular order:

• Wow, there are a lot of talents in the Prot tree. I spent all 61 points, and I still wanted to spend 10 more. Prot really needs a couple of talents in the high end collapsed, and maybe a couple PvP-dedicated talents in their place.



• I'm running out of space to put all my icons. 3 Judgements, Hammer of the Righteous, Seal of the Martyr, and at 75 we get Shield of Righteousness. It's all putting a squeeze on the available bar space I have.



• Hammer of the Righteous is broken at the moment. Admittedly, I'm using a caster weapon, but my character sheet says 116-213 damage, and I'm seeing white hits of 76-132. I run up to a mob, smack HotR, and it does a whopping 35 damage!
  
  HotR does anywhere from 35-120 damage, so I think it's bugged at the moment. As well, I haven't yet seen it crit. Admittedly, I have a pretty low crit rate in Prot gear, but I did test it a fair bit.



• The new cast time on Avenger's Shield is very nice. The dazed duration has increased to 10s, which is nice because it slows down the pull in a group. On the other hand, it takes forever for the mob to actually get to you.



• Protection plays pretty much like always does. Gather mobs, Consecrate, Holy Shield, and lots of numbers appear on your screen. For solo play, I think it might be a bit mana-hungry.



• The really interesting question will be Spell Power versus Attack Power gear. To a large extent this depends on how HotR works. Touched by the Light gives a fair bit of spell power to keep your SP-based spells from falling behind.

So that was my quick look at Protection. Some interesting things going on with it, but so far it seems very similar to TBC Protection.

WotLK Beta - Judgements II

Here's a quick way to sum up the new Judgement system:

Debuff comes from the Judgement; Damage comes from the Seal.

I actually really like the new system. It's really intuitive once you start playing with it. It makes Seals and Judgements more central to the paladin experience.

You get the benefit of JoL/W without having to sacrifice extra damage. You get an initial burst of Holy damage at the start of the fight. You can switch the debuff you have on the target quite easily.

Pretty much everything scales with both Attack Power and Spell Power. (I think Seal of Blood is the only thing that does not--it is AP-only.) It's great to see your Judgement debuffs become more powerful as your gear improves.

Heh, the only problem is that I keep forgetting to cast a new Seal after 30s. I'm so used to casting immediately after the Judgement, or macro'ing the Seal to the Judgement.

I've been doing a bit of work determining the new coefficients for the Seals and Judgements. They're buried in the thread on EJ, if anyone is interested. I just have to figure out how Command and Blood work, and I'll post a summary.

WotLK Beta - Judgements

WotLK is revamping the Seal and Judgement system. Here's an overview of Judgements.

There are three Judgement spells: Judgement of Light, Judgement of Wisdom and Judgment of Justice.

Casting a Judgement
- costs 5% of base mana (your mana without any gear)
- does not invoke a Global Cooldown
- requires an active Seal
- does not consume the active Seal!

Casting a Judgement has 2 effects:

1. Puts a debuff on the target. The exact debuff depends on which Judgement you cast. Casting Judgement of Light puts the Light debuff, JoW puts the Wisdom debuff, and JoJ puts the Justice debuff. Judgements last for 20s, but can be refreshed with your melee hits, or any Paladin's Crusader Strike.

2. Unleashes the active Seal for some Holy damage. The amount of damage depends on the active Seal. All Seals, including Seal of Light/Wisdom/Justice, do damage when unleashed. This effect does double damage on a critical strike for all active Seals. This effect does not consume the active Seal!

The Judgement of Justice debuff prevents NPCs from fleeing and prevents the target from increasing her speed beyond 100%.

The Judgement of Light and Wisdom debuffs have a chance to return health and mana, respectively, when an attacker strikes the target. The amount of health or mana returned depends on the paladin's Attack Power and Spell Power.

JoL: Health gained per proc = 18% * AP + 18% * SP

JoW: Mana gained per proc = 9% * AP + 9% * SP

In a group, the amount of health or mana gained depends on the stats of the Paladin who cast the Judgement.

Still to be determined:
- How refreshing debuffs with Crusader Strike interacts with health/mana values from JoL/JoW
- How changing stats in the middle of a fight (from temporary buffs or debuffs) affects JoL/JoW

WotLK Beta - Requests?

Thanks to a friend, I'm now have a WotLK Beta Key!

I'm currently near the SSO, with zero talent points, trying to nail down how the new Seals and Judgements work. (Seal and Judgment of Justice are bugged like crazy, which isn't helping.)

Anyways, if you guys have any requests about what I should look at or report on, feel free to ask in this thread. I only have my paladin transferred over at the moment, though.

Also, I haven't gone to Northrend or seen any of the new content yet. I'd like to play with some of the talent and mechanic changes first.