The Seal Tax

"Let the bears pay the bear tax, I pay the Homer tax."
- Homer J. Simpson

Part of the reason I'm insistent that Seals should not proc of instant attacks is because those Seals exact a "tax" on our abilities. To see what I mean, compare Mortal Strike and Crusader Strike.

Mortal Strike is easier to get (31 points vs 41 points), has an awesome debuff, and does about the same damage as Crusader Strike (100% Weapon + 380 vs 110% Weapon).

Yet that comparison is not quite accurate. CS will proc a Seal. If we assume Seal of Blood (Seal of Command is much the same, only more bursty and with a bit more complex math), Crusader Strike actually does 110% Weapon + 28% Holy Weapon. *That* ability combination compares well with Mortal Strike. Paladin attacks will always seem weaker than you would think, because of the hidden "Seal tax".

You can see the same thing with Divine Storm. 100% Physical Weapon damage to 4 targets, with a small heal, is seriously not worth being a 51-point talent. It's pretty much Whirlwind, only Whirlwind is a baseline warrior ability. But 100% Physical Weapon + 28% Holy Weapon is much closer to a decent talent.

Maybe it's a problem with perception, more than anything else. Paladin attacks just look weak, and I think that hurts the morale of the class. If abilities didn't proc seals, but were slightly buffed, I think paladins would be happier. If for example, assuming no seal proc, Crusader Strike did 125% Physical Weapon damage, and Divine Storm went back to 100% Holy damage, they would look more powerful. A direct comparison to warrior abilities is not so one-sided anymore.

Second, having abilities proc Seals tightly couples Seals to the abilities. This means the abilities don't really exist independently of each other, and it's harder to tweak abilities without affecting Seals and vice versa. For example, Seals have been significantly nerfed since the start of Beta, primarily to keep Retribution damage in line. But this has had the side-effect of significantly hurting Holy's ability to solo. If Seals were separate from abilities, the Seals could be made more powerful, and Ret's abilities tuned separately. This would help improve Holy soloing, while not adding to Ret's burst or sustained damage.

Third, I think Blizzard is coming too close to making a Retribution paladin feel like a "Warrior-lite". Crusader Strike is Mortal Strike without the debuff. Divine Storm is Whirlwind. Apparently we're getting a Deep Wounds variant just like Warriors. We gear like warriors, and use warrior weapons. Judgements of the Wise mimics rage.

Having some points of differentiations is important in my view. For example, the new Art of War talent is a very nice talent--assuming the heal doesn't interrupt the swing timer--because it plays up to the *paladin* side, and doesn't feel like a warrior talent at all. Even the old Crusader Strike refreshed all Judgements, which is a very paladin-centric ability. One of the knocks against the new CS is that it really doesn't feel like a paladin ability anymore.

One of the main points of differentiation is that paladins do Holy damage. That's our shtick. Crusader Strike is the exception, mostly so we can still do something when Silenced. The old Divine Storm was Holy damage, reinforcing the differentiation, and the paladin identity. And this manifests in subtle ways. As Slayton at Retpaladin.com points out:

Making Divine Storm be physical damage also takes away from the good itemization. The armor penetration we weren’t stacking just got an itemization buff, and that destroys the simplicity of who got what and what was best. We got the haste strength gear, warriors got the hit armor pen.

It's not to say that armor penetration and hit are useless to Ret paladins, just we value those stats slightly less than warriors, and that's a good thing. Too much homogeneity is bad for the game.

I want a Ret Paladin to feel like a Ret Paladin, not a warrior rip-off. Keep Divine Storm as Holy damage, decouple Seals from abilities, eliminate the Seal Tax and balance abilities so that they can stand on their own.

Crusader Strike Syndrome II

Looks like Retribution got nerfed again. Divine Storm now does Physical damage (and is affected by armor) instead of Holy.

I sense a pattern here. In 2.0, the top Ret talent was released. People screamed that Ret was overpowered, and Ret got nerfed. Then Blizzard had to reverse the nerf months later. In 3.0, the top Ret talent was released. People screamed that Ret was overpowered, and Ret got nerfed. Will Blizzard have to reverse this change too?

Kind of honestly, this does not reflect well on Blizzard's testing practices at all. DS has been Holy pretty much throughout Beta and Ptr, yet it needs to get *hotfixed* within 24 hours of going live? This seems like an overreaction. As well, this patch is full of bugs when it comes to paladin mechanics. Maybe Blizzard should actually fix some of the bugs affecting the class before nerfing it.

I stand by my statement that instant attacks proccing Seals was a bad idea. It widens the gap between Ret (2 instants) and Prot (1 instant) and Holy (0 instants). It causes us to have watered down instant attacks, because attached Seal damage has to be considered. It increases our extreme potential burst unnecessarily, due to Seal of Command.

3.0.2 Paladin Builds

Here are the builds I'm thinking about for Patch 3.0.2 (PvE mainly):

Holy - 51/5/5

You don't have enough points to get Conviction in Ret, and Ret paladins won't have enough points to get Kings and all their damage talents. So for now, it's probably easiest if Holy gets Kings.

Protection - 0/55/6

Gets all of the defensive talents, and a 9s Judgement to make Prot rotations smooth.

Retribution - 0/5/56

Most of the damage talents, plus a few essential utility talents. Improved Retribution Aura versus a couple more points in Righteous Vengeance is a toss-up, but I'll give the tanks a bit more threat.

Note that in Retribution, you want 8s Judgements. All the simulations I've done show it as being an increase in damage. Because Divine Storm is on a 10s cooldown, Retribution doesn't have a smooth rotation, and your ability cooldowns will clash every so often. However, Protection does have a perfect rotation with 9s Judgements, so Prot doesn't need to spend the extra talent point.

Achievements

I had a single area to uncover to finish exploring all of Outlands. Now to clear Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. There's a ton of zones where I'm only missing one area (including Elywnn Forest!).

Game Facets and Multiple Specs

I've been following Blizzard's comments about the dual-spec system that is probably coming after WotLK. I am a little worried that the system they are designing solves a different problem than the one many players want to be solved.

Let's start at the beginning. There are three "facets" to WoW: Group PvE, solo play in the world, and Group PvP. Many individual players want to able to participate in all three facets without going to a capital city and respeccing. The system Blizzard is designing theoretically allows you to do this, but it also allows you to change spec *within* a facet, as well. As Ghostcrawler puts it, "Since dps is your primary concern most of the time, this gives you a way to have say a trash spec and a boss spec, or a cc spec and pewpew spec without hurting your performance on either. "

Effectively, there are two goals:

Goal 1 - Participate in all 3 facets
Goal 2 - Have flexibility within a single facet

The problem here is that there is a conflict between individual and group. The individual wants to be able to participate in all three facets. The group prefers that the individual optimizes for the group's specific facet, and exerts significant pressure on the individual to do so. The group does this because it wants to be successful, not because it's on a power trip, and having the individual members optimized for the group's purpose helps significantly.

In the past, people have always optimized for the group. Spec, loot systems, loot priority, role, professions, buffs. Dual-spec systems will be no different. The system Blizzard is outlining will succeed with Goal 2, but fail to meet Goal 1. Both specs will be dedicated to a single facet of the game, especially for hybrids.

The only way to meet Goal 1 is for the game system to mechanically enforce the separation between facets.

For example, if one spec was only enabled in instances and the other spec was only enabled in Arena and Battlegrounds, then that would enforce an individual's ability to participate in all facets of the game. A group cannot pressure the individual into using two PvE specs, as the game physically prevents it.

The price here is that you lose the flexibility within a facet, you've now failed to meet Goal 2. Even so, I suspect that most individuals would probably prefer this solution, to be able to switch between PvP and PvE, or raiding and farming.

There are other solutions. For example, if you expanded to being able to switch between 3 or 5 specs, you could do:

Spec 1 - enabled in PvE
Spec 2 - enabled in PvE, world, PvP
Spec 3 - enabled in PvP

This would allow you to participate in multiple facets, but still have some flexibility in the group situation of your choice.

The ideal amount of flexibility would be something like:

Spec 1 - enabled in PvE, world
Spec 2 - enabled in PvE, world
Spec 3 - enabled in world
Spec 4 - enabled in world, PvP
Spec 5 - enabled in world, PvP

Note that spec 3 simply cannot be used in PvP or PvE. It's a guaranteed farming or personal spec. The game needs to enforce separation of facets, and prevent one facet from monopolizing all the character's resources. However, this is not as simple a solution, and might be too much flexibility.

Warhammer Online: Final Thoughts

I've pretty much decided that I'm going to drop WAR, at least after the first month runs out. It's a good game, with superb PvP and some interesting design decisions. A lot of the game mechanics are very well thought out. But I'm just not enthusiastic about logging in. There are several reasons why:

1. Starting the game makes me angry. Mythic, take a long hard look at the time from clicking the desktop icon to actually playing. Then take a look at WoW. In WAR, it's: login screen (which does not have focus for some reason), launcher, splash screen, splash screen, splash screen, intro movie, splash screen, EULA (!!), main character screen. (Why is there an extra button press if you want to pick another character? Why not go straight to the character select screen?)

In WoW, it's: launcher, login screen, character select. So much shorter, and it gets you into the game so much faster. It's like, "Hey, I want to play WoW" and then I'm in the game actually playing. Blizzard understands that when I click the desktop icon, I actually want to play the game, not fight my way through splash screens, movies, and EULAs.

Just starting a game of WAR is a hassle, and I find I'm always logging in slightly annoyed at the whole process.

2. Combat is not responsive enough. There's a distinct disconnect between pressing a button, the effect happening in game, and the animation on the screen. It's really bad on casters with long cast times, but it's noticeable even on melee characters. On my Witch Hunter, hitting an Execution (finishing move) has no relationship with firing my pistol. Often I end up firing my pistol at a dead body, as the Execution deals damage long before the animation actually happens.

3. A lot of basic functionality needs polish and basic fixes, especially the chat system. This is an MMO. It's defining characteristic is being able to play with other people. The chat system should be as close to perfect as possible. As it is, the chat system is mostly useless, and the game feels very quiet and lonely. There's lots of other subsystems with similar problems, like mail, etc.

4. Trade skills seem excessively complex and unintuitive. I don't think I like the design that requires multiple characters to function. I like being self sufficient to a degree. Even games with more intricate crafting, like A Tale In The Desert, allowed you to create things by yourself. Sure, it was a lot of work, but there's something deeply satisfying about constructing something all by yourself, from gathering the raw materials to producing the finished product. (And shuffling materials between a network of alts does not count.)

5. Probably the biggest reason is that I just haven't found a character class that grabs me. Mechanically, they're all quite well done. I really like the warrior priest mechanics, for example. But in a weird way, it might be because the WAR classes have *really* strong flavor. They're very specific: Human Witch-Hunter, Dark Elf Disciple of Khaine, etc. While WoW classes tend to be more general, more archetypical. Even paladin is a pretty generic class, with lots of room for interpretation. A rogue can be assassin, spy, thief, scout, swords, daggers, maces, dwarf, gnome, etc. But a Witch Hunter is a Witch Hunter.

You can see this in the armor. Looking at the first three paladin raid sets, you have Paladin as Golden Knight, Paladin as Dark Inquisitor, and Paladin as Gundam (not exactly a traditional paladin interpretation, but sometimes Blizzard is just weird).

I kind of like the freedom of the generic archetype. I like playing a Paladin, I'm not sure I like playing a Warrior Priest of Sigmar. Even though the mechanics of the Warrior Priest are superior to the mechanics of a Paladin.

But maybe I just haven't found the right class for me yet. Perhaps I'll check back in when Mythic adds the Knight of the Blazing Sun.

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Anyways, this is not to say that WAR is a bad game. It's actually quite a good game, with lots of intriguing ideas and solid PvP. If you're thinking about trying it, I strongly urge you to give it a go. Even just playing it for only the first month is worth the money in my opinion. You might find it' s the perfect game for you. I just don't think it's the game for me.

WotLK Beta - New Updates

Ghostcrawler posted some upcoming changes for paladins:

Righteous Defense -- cooldown lowered to 8 sec. It had been 10 sec recently and is 15 sec on live.

Infusion of Light -- now affects Flash of Light or Holy Light. Flash of Light is reduced to 0 cast time with 2 ranks, meaning that if you're running around and get a Holy Shock crit, you can also Flash without stopping.

Judgements of the Pure -- haste benefit now up to 15% with 5 ranks (was 10%).

Enlightened Judgements -- range benefit is now 30 yards with 2 ranks (was 20). This means you can judge or heal from the same range without having to run around so much.

They're all minor buffs, except for Infusion of Light.

The new IoL fundamentally changes the nature of the talent. The previous versions only applied to Holy Light, allowing a paladin to "sit" on the buff and drop a really fast big heal when necessary, while still doing maintenance healing with Flash of Light and Holy Shock. This granted more control over healing to the paladin.

The new IoL will apply to the very next heal cast after the Holy Shock. It will be used if the buff is needed, or if the buff is not needed. There is no added control over healing. The only thing the buff does is change the time a heal lands in the rotation. Instead of going:

0s - Shock (instant)
3s - FoL
4.5s - FoL

The paladin now goes:

0s - Shock (instant)
1.5s - FoL (instant)
4.5s - FoL

Wow, the gap got shifted one spell over, assuming you got lucky and your HS crit. That's so worth 2 talent points!

(The new IoL might be more useful in PvP, as double instant heals are probably pretty useful, even if the heals are smaller. )

But kind of honestly, Infusion of Light is now looking like a waste of talent points for a PvE build. Looks like Blizzard's crack Holy paladin dev team managed to make IoL even more pointless, and reduce the value of Holy Shock even further. I don't think there's any point to weaving Holy Shock into a regular healing rotation anymore. It's still okay for an emergency cast on the run, but not for casting regularly.

Stories, Wrong Choices, and Death Knights

This post and comments may contain spoilers about the Death Knight starting quest line. I've tried to be oblique about it though. This also may change before release, but I deem it unlikely at this point.

In western RPGs, there is a tradition of allowing the player to make some choices, and changing the world in response to those choices. In particular, western RPGs love multiple endings that depend on your choices throughout the game. However, because players in an MMO share reality, we don't make choices on quest lines. Rather, we play through the storyline, and our actions are dictated by the quest designer. In some ways, the designer acts more like an author or movie director than a traditional game designer.

For the most part, this works out pretty well. MMO quests are not deeply intricate, and most of the time the best choice for the story is obvious, and that's what the quest has us do. We may feel some sympathy for Edwin Van Cleef and his treatment at the hands of the nobility of Stormwind, but it's pretty clear he's gone nuts and needs to be taken down. That's really the extent of any moral dilemma in an MMO.

But what happens when the designer/author makes our character take the wrong choice?

This situation comes up in the Death Knight starting quest line. Your character has to make a choice, and she makes the wrong one. And it's not just the wrong choice morally, it's the wrong choice for the story as a whole. As a death knight, you're sent to do other immoral actions, but those work to forward the story. This choice works against what Blizzard is trying to set up in the relationship between the Death Knight characters and the Lich King. I can see the story unfold if the character took the other path, and it is much, much stronger.

In most stories where a villain is in a position of authority over the main character, there comes a point where the villain orders the hero to do something unforgivable. This sets up the rest of the character's arc. If the main character refuses, the story becomes about becoming a hero. If the main character agrees, the story becomes about the character's fall from grace.

The quest I am talking about is a perfect set up for this choice. Only the Death Knight chooses to fall. And that choice seriously weakens the rest of the Death Knight storyline. I can kind of see why Blizzard went this way. The idea is that this is supposed to awaken some feeling of goodness inside the Death Knight. But that awakening is never demonstrated, and thus it feels like the awakening never actually happened. In a lot of ways, the final climactic scene--which, by the way, is spectacular--is rendered hollow and feels oddly inconsistent because of the choice made in this quest.

I'm sorry if this seems obscure. I'm trying to avoid spoilers. If you're interested, I'm talking about the quest A Special Surprise. Search for it on Wowhead, the quest description pops up if I link directly to it. Ordinarily, I'd just delay this post until after Wrath is launched, but I'm hoping that Blizzard changes the quest. I don't think they will, but I can hope.

On Posting Lately

Aaron comments:

I'm seeing more and more Warhammer posts and less Warcraft posts. realise it's a new game, but is this trend going to continue? I used to read your blog as a great source of paladin information, but lately... Might be time to unsubscribe.

I want to say something about "unsubscribe" but everything I try to write is coming out too snarky. So I'll just leave it alone.

The reason I'm not posting a lot about WoW and paladins is that nothing much is happening with them. Ret and Prot are pretty fun to play in Beta. Blizzard just needs to fix a couple of bugs (Art of War, mainly), and tune the numbers slightly, and those two trees are good to go.

About the only major change I'd want Blizzard to consider is to stop proccing Seals off special attacks, and then adjust the numbers. This might also allow Blizzard to dial Seal damage up a bit (revert the 20% nerf?) and that would make soloing as Holy easier. Seriously, soloing as Holy is something like three times slower than Ret. It's not so bad for the other healing classes, as healing gear now doubles as dps gear for them and they have the necessary tools to solo effectively. A resto shaman can still pump out Lightning Bolts and Shocks. A druid still has Moonfire and Starfire. But Holy lacks the tools that the other specs have.

Healing as Holy is still boring. But it's too late to significantly change Holy, and Blizzard seems happy with with the tree. Further proof that none of the designers play a Holy paladin.

Besides which, it's not going to matter. Blizzard is still intent on balancing raids around large numbers of healers. Most raiding paladins are going to be forced to heal, just because there won't be enough healers. Our Blessings are still in non-optimal state, meaning that PallyPower is going to be a required raid mod. All in all, I don't think I'm really looking forward to raiding in Wrath of the Lich King, at least not as a Paladin.

For now, at least WAR offers something new and different.

Warhammer Online: Public Quests, Redux

Bacon of Light

Epic thread on the WoW forums. Some highlights:

Bacon of Light is actually a skill for another hero class: the Iron Chef

The Iron Chef uses the Meal & Judgment system

The Iron Chef first creates a Meal (Meal of Light, Meal of Wisdom, etc), and when he calls for it, the judges come in and Judge the Meal

They have "Ham" spells that they can use on themselves or others. i.e Ham of Freedom, Ham of Protection

The Iron Chef also has auras like Froth Resistance Aura when you need to make a clear soup/broth/etc

Talents include "Rye for a Rye" and "Holy Stock" (much better than chicken stock, beef stock, etc.)

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Only parts of the class are OP. Some parts are still questionable if it'll work out. For example, I think Guardian's Flavor should also affect Ham of Sacrifice, what with HoS being on such a long cooldown, but that's just me.

---

Back to the IC... it's even more dangerous in a group.

Basting of Might fills up a warrior's sage bar to full, and they'll be handling out Mackerel Strikes left and right with no cooldown.

Basting of Wisdom turns a shaman into a Grain-heal spamming machine

Basting of Kings is just good for anyone

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no what's really OP is how they can spam Dash of Spice on their allies forever and never have to stop.

Hmm, I'm hungry now.

Warhammer Online: Defender's Dilemma

I was playing Warhammer Online with my Witch Elf the other night. I was doing the Tier 1 Elf scenario Khaine's Embrace.

Khaine's Embrace is pretty neat. There are two standards. If your team captures both standards, a horn sounds, and there is a giant explosion, killing everyone in a large radius around the standards. Then your team gets 75 points, and the standards reset. I like the map, though possibly mostly for the horn sound and explosion graphics.

Anyways, it's early in the match, Order has their standards, but we're pressing them hard. All of a sudden, our standard gets captured, and we fall behind. It turns out not a single person is defending, so a lone Order player was able to sneak by and cap.

So I start defending. It's terribly boring, but I do kill several Order players who try the sneak again. Our flag is never captured again, and we win handily.

The problem is that I ended up getting the lowest renown and rewards from that fight. And that has really soured me on WAR. I'll be honest, I basically won that map for my side. The zerg didn't accomplish anything, but they got to rack up kills and renown.

This is the problem with systems that try and track contribution, and hand out rewards based on contribution. Sometimes contribution is very hard to track. Defense in particular is hard to judge. Not to mention that it's far more boring than being on the attack with the front line.

Edit: Not to mention that you can apparently leave your Scenario group and not share any Renown/XP with the other players. Ahh, Mythic, did you not learn anything from WoW?

WotLK Beta - Holy Updates

Divine Plea

Following a massive outcry on the official forums, Elitist Jerks, and pretty much every paladin site in existence, Blizzard changed Divine Plea to only decrease healing by -20%, but it is now a dispellable buff.

To be honest, I always assumed it was dispellable. Every other paladin ability is.

Infusion of Light

No changing on Infusion of Light. Holy is still looking very boring.

Honestly, there's nothing to look forward to in Holy. I macro Divine Favor and Divine Illumination to HL11, that's how boring those two abilities are. Holy Shock is kind of cool, but it's been lackluster for so long, it's hard to get enthusiastic. And even then, without IoL, HS loses a lot of its new shine.

You look at Ret, and you have Vengeance, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm to look forward to. In Protection, Avenger's Shield is more exciting than all of Holy combined. You get to throw your shield at people like Captain America! Never gets old. (Though, the 10s daze is a little excessive. Takes the mobs a bit too long to get to you, and the fighting to actually start.)

JoW bug/nerf

If this is intentional, it is a big nerf to JoW. However, I sort of see the logic behind it. JoW is a very powerful buff that only a paladin can provide. Blizzard is trying to move away from buffs which only come from one class. If JoW had remained unchanged, it's quite possible that having a paladin would be mandatory for any raid content.

It is a severe hit to an ability that we love. But Blizzard's goal of making it easier to form a raid--being able to bring people because they are more skilled or are friends, instead of bringing them for their buffs--is more important than JoW being powerful.

On the other hand, I don't think this change should apply to JoL. Healing scales in a way that mana regeneration does not.

WotLK Beta - Holy Nerfs

Some significant nerfs to Holy paladins in this round of patches. Much angst on the forums.

Judgement of the Wise has been changed to grant you 33% of your base mana instead of 20% of your maximum mana.

As expected, JotW got changed to base mana to prevent healing paladins from using it.

Divine Plea changed to : You gain 25% of your total mana over 15 sec (Old - 10 sec), but the amount healed by your spells is reduced by 100%. (Old - 50%)

This spell is very odd. It's like being being given the ability to drink in combat. Except we can run around and hit things at the same time. I guess it might be good for off-tanking Prot paladins, or maybe Ret paladins during Hammer of Wrath, or maybe as an absolutely last-ditch gambit for Holy (though seriously, 15s of no heals equals a dead tank). I dunno, it just seems like Blizzard is scared of this breaking, so they make it unusable.

Infusion of the Light now reduces the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 0.5/1sec. (Down from 1.25/2.5 sec)

Blah. Infusion of the Light was the one interesting talent in Holy. Now it's pretty much a Light's Grace clone, only with a trigger that is random.

The thing about IoL is that it was the one talent that changed how Holy played. Given that the current playstyle of Holy is extremely boring, a talent that mixed things up was very welcome. IoL gave a very strong incentive to weave Holy Shock into our healing rotation. It provided mobility, allowing you to heal on the run. You could do things like nurse a instant-HL while getting back mana with Seal of Wisdom, or heal someone else in the raid, confident that you can react quickly to a damage spike on your main target.

With the IoL change, Holy returns to being an immobile single-target-spam platform. Sometimes the spells have a short cast time, sometimes they have a long cast time, but it's still just spam.

Honestly, Holy now looks very unappetizing. It's quite possible that it is still powerful, but it is uninteresting. Pretty much every talent in the tree reduces cast time or increases crit. Very boring, and not very active.

Unconfirmed: Judgement of Wisdom now procs once every 4 seconds on the raid-level.

Previously, each individual would see a JoW proc every 4 seconds. Now it is being reported that one person will see a JoW proc at time 0, a different person at time 4, etc. This is a massive nerf to JoW.

On the plus side, Sacred Shield apparently scales at 0.75 damage prevented per SP per shield.

This looks like a pretty nice change for Sacred Shield, making it a very useful ability.

Warhammer Online:The Chat Box

If you play Warhammer Online, you'll soon notice some odd behavior, at least compared to other MMOs: No one talks on the public chat channels.

It's very weird, everything being so silent. There are plenty of other players around. And it's so unlike the other MMOs I've played. In WoW, you can't get people to shut up, especially in the Barrens. Even Age of Conan, people talked a lot, if only to complain that their systems couldn't handle the game. But people are always chatting or complaining about quests or classes or Chuck Norris, and it's extremely disconcerting not to have that. Heck, there's more talking in Wizard 101, and that game was trying to prevent conversation.

I think the problem resides solely with Mythic's implementation of the WAR chatbox. There are three main reasons why it fails:

1. The font is too large, and the box is too small

A large font means that less information can be conveyed. It means that fewer lines of text can be shown, and a smaller history of the conversation is preserved. It also means that a lot of messages which should only take up one line wrap into two lines, further wasting the limited chat space.

2. Too many useless messages

In particular, the NPCs talk a lot, and quite frankly spam your chat box. This is very annoying, especially those which have long speechs, or multiple NPCs interacting. I think you can turn this off, but it was a mistake to include it in the default settings.

(As a complete aside, ever notice that text in the NPC speech bubbles has quotation marks? That seems weird and redundant to me.)

The other big contributor to this problem is transaction messages when buying or selling items. Again, multiple lines are taken up with each item, making harder to have a conversation with people.

The golden rule of chat boxes is that chat boxes should be reserved for communicating with other players. If at all possible, messages from the game to the player should be handled by the rest of the UI. Only messages that absolutely have to be in the chat box history should show up. Otherwise players will quickly learn to ignore the chatbox, as nothing useful ever shows up.

A further problem here is that general chat appears to be the same colour as game messages, making it even easier to ignore.

3. Lack of feedback when changing channels

Load up WoW, and type "/1 " (with the space). See what happens? The chat channel immediately changes to General, so you know what channel you are sending your message to.

Do the same thing in WAR. Notice that nothing happens. There's no indication that you are sending your message to the right channel. If you keep typing, "/1 test", that will send the message "test" out on the general channel. But the lack of feedback, I think hampers people from figuring out how to talk, makes it less intuitive, especially since no one else is talking.

To my mind, this whole issue indicates the importance of the small stuff. The three concerns I've outlined are minor. The default chat box certainly looks functional on paper. But I think these small issues have kept people from talking, and have made the experience very different from other MMOs. As well, I think this silence is negative. We play MMOs to play with other people, and it's nice to see people talking. Many people have called MMOs "glorified chatrooms", and I think that's a part of their appeal.

Over the Line

I think we've finally taken the "-adin" meme to excess.

Healadin, retadin, protadin, reckadin, shieldadin, shockadin, baconadin, sheathadin, loladin, bubble-hearthadin. All those are okay.

But gorilladin is an "-adin" too far.

Edit: AMG, I can't believe I forgot "tankadin".

Frostwyrm Lair Needs a Key

The final bosses of Naxxramas, Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad, reside in Frostwyrm Lair. Currently, Frostwyrm Lair only opens up after all four wings of Naxx have been cleared. I've posted the following suggestion on the WoW Beta Dungeons Forums.

I think Blizzard should add a key to Frostwyrm Lair. What I would suggest is have a quest requiring a item from each of the four bosses at the end of the four wings. Then you turn the quest in, and the NPC gives you a key that allows you to unlock Frostwyrm Lair. Only one person in the raid should need the key.

Reasoning:

1. Naxx is a large instance. A more-casual guild which only raids for one or two nights a week will have a very hard time killing Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad, simply because of the time they need to spend clearing the instance.

A key makes this much easier. Consider a guild that only raids for one night a week. They can now work on a wing at a time, and when they have cleared all four wings over several weeks, they can start work on Frostwyrm Lair. They can continue to progress at their own pace, without being forced to play more than they want.

2. Naxx is the first instance. That means that at some point it must be dropped from a guild's raid schedule in order to progress forward. But it is very hard for casual guilds to be weaned off farming, especially if they still need stuff from the later bosses. Having a key would allow guilds to move forward, while still farming the parts of Naxx where they still need loot.

Naxx as one large instance was a good model for the capstone raid of original WoW. It is not a good model for the entry-level raid for Wrath. A Frostwyrm Lair Key would go a long way towards making Naxx more casual-friendly and more importantly, more expendable, which is a necessary quality for an entry level dungeon.

On Balance

Random signature seen on the WoW forums (credit to Building of Uldaman):

Dear Blizzard,

Paper is fine, but Rock needs to be nerfed.

Thanks, Scissors

Warhammer Online: Warrior-Priest

I gave the Warrior Priest in Warhammer Online a whirl. This class is awesome! If the class plays at endgame like it does now, Blizzard is going to lose paladins to WAR. (At least, if there are any old-school hybrid paladins left.)

About a year ago, I posted that the basic nature--the essence--of a paladin was that the paladin heals her allies, and smites her enemies with a giant hammer. Both Retribution and Holy have failed miserably at this.

The warrior priest completely nails this in so many different ways. You need to hit the enemy in order to build up Righteous Fury, which you use to cast your healing spells. So far, my healing spells are a straight HoT, a direct heal + HoT (like Regrowth) and an attack that whales on an enemy and does 250% of the damage as healing to your defensive target.

There's also a lot of smaller touches, like a Righteous Fury-generating attack that does lower damage, but heals your entire party for a little bit. There's an attack which increases the Strength of your defensive target for 20 seconds.

The biggest thing about the Warrior Priest is that you have to attack, indeed you are rewarded for attacking, and attacking does not hurt your healing. Being able to maintain both an offensive and defensive target is what really makes this class work.

The only thing about the warrior priest is that it is definitely a healer, not a tank. It's not really a "knightly" archetype, the way the Warcraft paladin (theoretically) is. It wears medium armor, and is very cleric-like in appearance. I suppose that's irony, that WAR's cleric plays like a knight, while Warcraft's shining knight plays like a cleric.

You can't use shields. And you are expected to heal. But you get to run to the front lines and hit people with a giant hammer. Kind of honestly, that's really all I've ever wanted from my paladin. Though this does mean you get focus-fired a fair amount. As well, juggling both an offensive and defensive target is challenging, as is balancing generating and spending Righteous Fury.

I'm really enjoying playing the warrior priest. Of course, I haven't hit endgame, I'm only Rank 9 (of 40), and we did not see the over-specialization of the paladin until the endgame in WoW. But still, I have to give kudos to Mythic for designing an amazingly fun melee-healer.

(If you play Destruction, the equivalent class is the Disciple of Khaine, with similar mechanics. But evil elves are so 1990s. Plus, as Order you get instant scenario queues!)

Streamlining Blessings

Over at Eye for an Eye, Josh notes that Blessings are still much more complicated to maintain than other buffs. To achieve maximum effectiveness, it requires a lot of planning, and even mods like Pally Power. He asks if there is a better way to handle blessings.

The problem with Blessings is that each class-spec has a different priority order for Blessings. Retribution paladins want Might, while Holy paladins want Wisdom. So class-based buffing only works if you have enough paladins to cast every Blessing. And if you have enough paladins to cast every Blessing, you could just as easily buff entire groups instead of classes.

Blessings would be easier to handle if the blessings were deliberately unbalanced. I.e. Blessing One is more powerful than Blessing Two which is more powerful than Blessing Three. Then assigning Blessings in an optimum fashion would be trivial. The first paladin casts Blessing One on the raid. The second paladin casts Blessing Two, etc. In all honesty, balancing the Blessings against each other--while appealing to our sense of symmetry--just makes life harder in raiding.

My suggestion for streamlining Blessings would be to combine Might and Wisdom into a single Blessing: Blessing of Faith. For the most part, Might and Wisdom are mutually exclusive. The priests being able to hit mobs harder with their staves doesn't really matter. The only classes that would benefit are Retribution and Protection paladins, Enhancement shamans, and Hunters. Even then, Wisdom is generally low priority for those classes.

Blessing of Faith would make it much easier to cover entire classes. You hit the Druids with Faith, and the Ferals rejoice over the Attack Power, while the Trees and Boomkins revel in MP5. No need to hand out individual Blessings. As well, Faith comes very close to being the best Blessing overall. The first paladin hands out Faith, the second hands out Kings, and the third hands out Sanctuary.

Next I would clean up the talent trees as follows:

1. Combine Improved Blessing of Might and Improved Blessing of Wisdom into Improved Blessing of Faith (improves Blessing of Faith by 10/20%) in the Holy tree in the same spot as current Imp Wisdom.

2. Make Blessing of Kings baseline at 6%. Add Improved Blessing of Kings (improves Kings by additional 2/4%) to the Retribution tree in the same spot as current Imp Might.

3. Add some other random Tier 1 Protection talent that Holy might like to dip into.

So essentially we have three blessings: Faith, Kings, and Sanctuary. Each tree specializes in one, so you can count on a Holy Paladin to have Imp Faith and a Ret Paladin to have Imp Kings.

Then streamline a bit further by having Greater Blessings buff the group instead of the class. That should make raid buffing on par with all the other classes.

There's still a little awkwardness around the fact that tanks probably have a different priority than the rest of the raid. But I think this system would be better than the current system, while not being too different.