Ask Coriel: The Value of Strength

Zack writes in:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ask Coriel: Retribution Questions

Melissa asks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buff Durations

Mark writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warhammer Online: Spread Too Thin

I think WAR should have cut the elves.

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

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

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

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

New PvP Rating System

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

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

Team Rating

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

Personal Rating

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

Matchmaker Rating

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

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

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

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

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

Divine Plea Idea

The details of the upcoming Divine Plea nerf:

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

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

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

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

What I would suggest for Divine Plea is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Paladin Changes in 3.1

Eyonix posted the list of changes for the remaining classes. Here are my thoughts on the paladin changes.

Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

What a long road we've been on to get to this point. Ah well, no more whining about Kings. I wonder what the new Tier 1 talent talent will be.

Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Very interesting. A nice buff for Holy soloing, and normalizes Retribution damage across all enemy types. The only concern I have is that this does add to PvP burst, as Exorcism is now usable on players. CS, Judge, DS, Exorcism, CS is now a complete string of attacks with no breaks in between.

Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

Shield of the Templar becomes a PvP talent mainly. Frees up some points for PvE builds. A 3 second silence every 6 seconds on the highest damage ability sounds a little bit crazy though. I expect this to get nerfed once it's on the PTR.

Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

Thinning out the Protection tree heavily. The real question is whether these talents will provide the same effect for fewer talent points, or will simply provide a smaller effect. I can almost guarantee you that Imp Hammer of Justice will be reduced to -10 seconds for 1 talent point and become the 11-point Protection talent. It's a solid nerf to Ret PvP, and Ghostcrawler will probably be happy to see us shut up about missing that 11-pointer.

Now, what will happen with Ardent Defender and One-Handed Weapon Specialization is more nebulous. Either way, Protection just got a lot more points to put in the secondary trees.

Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Shield of Righteousness is the spell which will refresh Divine Plea. It's actually pretty elegant, creating a mana-return mechanic around ShR that the Protection paladin should be able to keep up throughout the fight.

Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

This is the reason I predict Imp HoJ is the 11-pointer. This talent would mean that Protection still gets 30s HoJ, but Retribution does not.

I'm not entirely sure why Protection PvP is being pushed, but I, for one, welcome our new Protection overlords.

Cynicism

On Wednesday, Blizzard announced 3.1 changes to the Priest, Rogue, and Shaman.

On Thursday, Blizzard announced 3.1 changes to the Warlock, Druid, and Warrior.

Presumably, changes to the Hunter, Death Knight, Mage, and Paladin will be announced on Friday.

Traditionally, Blizzard announces nerfs on a Friday.

The Dedicated Few

Wheeeee! I even survived Heigan!

Heh, I'll try and put up a real post tomorrow.

Thaddius

The best fight in Naxxramas is Thaddius.

There are so many reasons this fight is great. First is the atmosphere. It's all about constructs and electricity, strongly evoking Frankenstein's Monster. Polarity, splitting into two, positive and negative, so much great flavor. The layout of the room even reminds me of a MOSFET.

Second is the introduction to the fight with Stalagg and Fuegen. It's beautifully designed to split your raid in half, allowing a seamless transition to Thaddius. Simultaneous kills are always a fun mechanic. The swapping of tanks is hilarious. It reinforces the whole shifting sides flavor of the fight.

Third is the jump to Thaddius' ledge. Why is there a jump? There doesn't need to be one. But it's there, and it's just a little bit of extra challenge. It's also something that lends itself to memorable fights. A lot of people talk about the jump and it probably generates more chatter than any of the other elements.

Fourth is the polarity shift mechanic on Thaddius himself. I just find watching for polarity shifts and running around Thaddius to be fun. It's a mechanic that also beautifully reinforces the primary flavor theme of the fight.

Lastly, I really like the strategies available to defeat Thaddius. I've only killed him with the two-point strategy. But the four-point strategy is elegant. It's one of the few strategies that have really impressed me with its cleverness.

(Four-point is to form a square around Thaddius with the two groups on diagonally opposite points. On a polarity shift, if your charge changes, run to the point on your right. If your charge stays the same, run to the point on your left.)

Thaddius is the best fight in Naxxramas. It has great flavor, and elegant mechanics which serve to strongly reinforce that flavor, while still providing a challenge for the raid.

Profession Dependency

My main, Coriel, is an enchanter. One of the new changes to enchanting in Wrath is that enchanters can create scrolls of specific enchants and sell the scrolls on the Auction House, rather than having to troll Trade chat if you want to sell enchants.

I tried out the new system the other day, grabbing an Armor Vellum off the AH and making a Scroll of Enchant Cloak - Greater Speed. I put it up for sale at pretty much material cost. To my surprise, the scroll sold. This is great for me because I'm only at 430 enchanting or so, and if I can get the skill points by selling scrolls, that's much easier.

So I went back to the AH. But there were zero Armor Vellum up for sale. Armor Vellum is made by Inscriptionists, and a necessary component for every enchanting scroll you want to make. Now I have to track down an inscriptionist and come to some agreement. This is pretty much the exact process I was hoping to avoid with regular Enchanting.

I really don't like professions to be dependent on each other in this fashion. I much prefer the model where a character can take the crafter/gatherer combo and be self-sufficient for the most part. I don't mind one-off recipes where you have to get an item from another crafter. For example, an enchanter needs a rod from blacksmithing every so often. But to need an item from another profession for every single enchanting scroll made is excessive.

I think Armor and Weapon Vellums should have been craftable by enchanters. Giving that essential component over to Inscription, making the two professions tightly coupled, is just frustrating.

Tip for Slimes

A couple of nights ago, I did some of Naxxramas (10-man) for the first time. Having your very first Naxx fight be Four Horsemen is rather intimidating, in light of that fight's history.

Aside from me completely failing on Kel'Thuzad and the Frost Blasts, it went pretty well. Killed some stuff, got a couple of epics, and even made the Thaddius jump.

I did die to the slimes after Patchwerk. It was odd because I blew up, didn't see any slimes near me, and had to pan my camera around to see the slime that killed me. One of the people in the raid gave me a tip which I had not seen before, so I thought I'd pass it along:

Don't run in the middle of the gap between slimes. Run right behind one of the slimes.

Pretty simple. I'm not sure why my natural reaction was to aim for the middle. The problem is not to maximize distance from both slimes, but to maximize distance from the incoming slime.

Now I have to master healing the Frost Blast targets fast enough. Any tips? I think I have to figure out how to get Grid to display that debuff properly.

Shield of Righteousness, Part II

Klepsacovic did bring up an interesting point in response to the last post:

This is how we start ending up with prot wanting SP again. If it scales with SP and we don't want it using SP, then it must scale better with strength, but then it might scale too well compared to DKs and warriors so it gets nerfed... next thing we know we're rolling on mage weapons again.

This is true. The line between Prot paladins going for tanking weapons and spelldamage weapons is very thin. It's easily possible for a ShR that scales with spellpower to push Protection into caster weapon land, much to the dismay of the mages.

So let's take another shot at making Shield of Righteousness something for Holy to get excited about. How about playing with Infusion of Light:

Infusion of Light
Requires Holy Shock, 35 points in Holy
Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 sec or Holy Light by 0.5/1 sec, or increases the damage of your next Shield of Righteousness by 50/100% of your spellpower.

Holy gets a nice 1-2 punch with a crit Holy Shock followed by a powerful Shield of Righteousness. It's deep enough in the Holy tree that Protection and Retribution can't get access to it. Holy Shield is melee-only, so it should be okay in PvP. If you use your IoL proc on ShR, you can't use it on an instant or fast heal.

It might resurrect the Shockadins with a 37/0/34 build, but I don't really see that as a negative. A new build type would be amusing.

Shield of Righteousness

I was doing my Sons of Hodir dailies today as Holy (still working my way to exalted), and it struck me that if Shield of Righteousness had a Spellpower coefficient, it would be really useful for Holy soloing.

Shield of Righteousness right now is:

Damage = BlockValue + 400

Since Strength now contributes a lot to block value, Protection and Retribution get a lot out of the first term, and the 400 is just icing on the cake because 200% of block value was too powerful. But since Holy has no strength, the second term dominates, and the first term contributes less damage. My ShR hits for about 670 damage.

But if Shield of Righteousness looked like:

Damage = J*BlockValue + K*Spellpower

It would suddenly be a lot more useful. Both Protection and Retribution have talents granting them a small amount of spellpower, so they won't miss the base 400 damage. But it would make the spell scale for Holy, and give them a nice extra attack for soloing.

Disappointed by Hand of Reckoning

Hand of Reckoning is a decent spell mechanically. The fact that it can crit is pretty funny, especially with Retribution, as it starts up Vengeance.

But the name really disappoints me. Back in April, I noted that Blizzard does a really good job with class names, and that I felt it added a lot to the flavor of the game. But in Wrath, it feels like Blizzard is phoning it in when it comes to paladin ability names. It bugs me because this was something Blizzard was so good at. It feels like Blizzard decided that names were too small of a detail to spend effort on.

Let's take a look at some new paladin ability names:

Divine Storm - Okay, this one is pretty awesome. "Divine" is being overused a bit (Divine Protection, Divine Shield, Divine Illumination, Divine Favor, Divine Intervention) but it just works here.

Divine Plea - Umm, yeah. This is just overuse.

Seal of Corruption - Corruption is a warlock word, and is really unsuitable for a paladin ability. I think Blizzard is trying to fit it in with the Blood Elves, but I thought the Blood Elves got redeemed. I think Blizzard could extend Vengeance to the Blood Elves without issue.

Seal of the Martyr - this is pretty good, though unnecessary. Seal of Blood can fit Alliance paladins too.

Hammer of the Righteous - like "Divine", "Righteous" is getting overused. But this one is okay.

Shield of Righteousness - This is just laziness, coming after Hammer of the Righteous.

Hand of Reckoning - This just does not make any sense. Hands are the old Blessings, short-term utility buffs cast on allies. This spell is not a Hand in any way, shape or form. And "Reckoning"? What does that have to do with taunts? This name feels like Blizzard picked a paladin word out of a hat, slapped the "Hand" prefix on it, and called it a day. I don't see how anyone who actually plays a paladin could sign off on this name.

I'm going to reiterate the suggestion that this ability be renamed to Rebuke. It's short, snappy, and has nice religious connotations which are perfect for the paladin class.

It also matches the taunts of the other tanking classes. Warriors Taunt opponents, bears Growl at them, death knights issue Dark Commands, and paladins would Rebuke them. All words with verbal connotations, but each infused with the separate unique flavor of their respective classes.

Ask Coriel: Levelling Gear

Jordrah asks:

I've got a slight problem that I was wondering if you'd have any input for. I'm a very slow leveler (that's quite the understatement) so my paladin is still level 73 and my shaman 71, this long after the expansion was released. My paladin's gear was a mix of heroic rares and epics, Kara/Gruul/Mags and SSC/TK epics, with the main goal of staying at the old hit cap. Since I started leveling again I've had trouble deciding what gear is better. I have Rating Buster installed so that helps somewhat, but it's still a bit hard to decide when it's between something with more penetration and expertise and something with hit rating and crit rating (with nearly equal amounts of stam and str). It was a lot easier to decide what was best when I was at max level and there was a hierarchy of importance with respect to all the stats, but there is no resource that I know of for gear selection when it comes to leveling. I was wondering how you go about deciding what gear is better and worse while you're leveling?

In general, you use the same hierarchy that the max level people use. For Ret paladins it's Str, Hit, Crit, etc. The only difference is that you don't want really large amounts of Hit Rating because you're usually fighting stuff around your level.

To be honest though, it doesn't really matter. I actually go by armor value when I level. If it is damage plate gear and has more armor than my current gear, I upgrade. It's a very simple rule of thumb that works out quite well.

You really only need to be concerned about gear once you approach 80. Otherwise, just concentrate on levelling and questing, and you'll find that the upgrades will come. My gear was roughly the same as yours, and I started seeing a few upgrades around level 74-75, if I remember correctly.

Thanks for the input. I was just wondering how to pick the gear that I keep and the gear that I vendor. I go by a similar hierarchy, and in fact sometimes end up using what ever item has the higher armor value like you said. But the confusion on my part is all the new stats that are on gear now.

When I hit 70 during BC, the stats that we got from entry level gear were always strength, crit or agility, and hit rating. As BC went on, Blizzard started adding in new stats such as armor penetration, haste and expertise, and since I never really raided Black Temple or Sunwell I never looked too deeply into those stats.

But in Wrath, there are green quest rewards with these new goodies and I'm unsure about whether they really are goodies or not. Ex: how much haste does an item needs to have in order for me to decide that its better than another item that has crit instead of haste (assuming equal amounts of strength). I'm not very concerned about gear while I level, but I just don't want to regret vendoring a quest reward that might be vastly superior to what I have.

You don't really have to worry about this. In my experience in Wrath, an item's "budget" is divided evenly among its stats. So if it has more haste than crit, it will also have more strength, making the choice a lot more obvious.

The only items that don't follow this are trinkets, as they usually offer a lot of a single stat. But usually these are fairly obvious upgrades, or the numbers are very close so you just choose the better stat.

To be honest, gear doesn't really matter all that much. As long as you are in the right ballpark, and using the proper ability rotations, it will be good enough for starting out. Try and enchant your gear (with the relatively cheap enchants) when you get to 80, even if it's just blues. That will help a lot as well.

Also, I was wondering how you would go about re-gearing from ret to prot once I hit 80, should I group as ret and try and get tank drops, or should I respec and try and get gear to get me started via the AH, quest rewards and crafted items?

Generally quests will only offer 1 plate reward. If there's a tanking plate reward, there's not likely to be a DPS plate reward. So you can collect gear for all three sets at the same time. Then you can supplement those with crafted items and reputation items, and that will be more than enough to get started with whatever spec you desire.

I don't think it will be worth it to try and get Prot gear while Ret specced. It will take a lot longer, and you should be able to put together a decent Prot set by the time you hit 80.

The best advice I can give you is not to worry about gear. Enjoy levelling and questing and do the normal 5-man dungeons. As you do stuff, gear will come.

New Glyph of Hammer of Wrath

Sometimes, I think of the theorycrafting community as soothsayers, seeking to divine reality or the future by observing the flight of birds or the entrails of animals.

Take the new Glyph of Hammer of Wrath. In patch 3.0.8, it will reduce the cost of Hammer of Wrath by 100%. What does this mean for Ret paladins?

A while back, I theorized that Blizzard was trying to limit Retribution's use of Consecration through mana constraints. The way the math worked was that we had a mana-neutral basic rotation which was used for the first 80% of the fight, and a mana-hungry burn rotation for the last 20%.

However, with the new Glyph of Hammer of Wrath, that theory goes out the window. There's no difference in mana consumption between the last 20% and first 80% anymore. That means that Consecration becomes an even more vital part of the Rotation, and is expected to be used much more often, as you no longer need to save mana for Hammer of Wrath.

I guess Blizzard has given up on the idea of keeping Retribution from using Consecration. I suppose it's for the best, though. Consecration is a good method of increasing our PvE DPS without spiking PvP damage damage. Still, it's slightly odd to be expected to use an AoE spell against a single target.

Challenge and Accessibility

Obviously, the last post was a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I think it does have valid point. To a lot of people, the challenge is an essential part of raiding. In my opinion, there is no greater rush in WoW than defeating a boss who has been wiping your guild for weeks.

In some ways, your kill needs meaning, and for it to be meaningful you must consider the boss a worthy opponent. The boss earns your respect by repeatedly wiping your guild over and over. One-shot kills are meaningless. There's no sense of progression, of getting better and better, of attaining mastery of that fight.

The fight I loved best in TBC was Moroes, despite it being the second fight in the raiding game. When you beat Moroes, it really felt like you had mastered the challenge, that you beat it by becoming more skilled.

But having a challenge means that some people will fail to meet that challenge. And that often gates content. The complaint that paying the same amount of money should at least entitle you to see all the content, to see all the story, is also reasonable.

I think the solution Blizzard has chosen--a relatively easy main path that allows you view all the content, with harder challenges that are optional--is probably the best solution. And I believe that rewards need to scale with the challenge. The best rewards should come from the hardest challenges.

One issue that I think has really made the situation worse than it should be is that the gap in skill between the high and low ends of the playerbase is excessively large. For example, I thought Karazhan was perfectly tuned for an entry level raid. The theoretical max DPS in 70 blues was around 900. Karazhan was tuned for about 500 DPS. I thought that 55% of max seemed reasonable for an entry level raid. But apparently most people disagreed with me.

I think the game would be a lot healthier if the low and high ends were closer in skill, if there wasn't so much variance. But I'm not sure how you would accomplish that. Maybe you'd have to change mechanics so that skill mattered much less, and gear mattered more.

Disneyland, Redux

Dear Disneyland Visitor,

As you are no doubt aware, here at Disneyland we have some of finest roller coasters available in North America. However, in our continuing efforts to serve the public better, we have determined that there are people out there who don't feel comfortable riding one of our fine rides. Some people are too young, some people are too old. Some people are afraid of heights, and some people feel the roller coasters go too fast.

In order to broaden our appeal, and serve our loyal fans better, we've instituted several changes.

First, roller coasters will no longer have such extreme slopes and loops. All our coasters will be limited to slopes of less than 15 degrees. Second, no roller coaster will go higher than 25 feet. We hope this will enable all our customers to enjoy the rides without fear. Finally, roller coasters will be limited to speeds under 10 miles an hour. This will allow all customers to experience the thrill of these magnificent rides without experiencing discomfort.

Thank you for coming, and we do hope you enjoy the new, more sedate, roller coaster experience. We understand that some of our more "hardcore" (as Goofy likes to call them) enthusiasts may be concerned with the changes, but we hope that they understand that these changes will allow many more fellow amusement park visitors to experience these beloved rides.

Sincerely,
Mickey Mouse

On Wikis and Raider101

Wow! Thanks to all the people who've signed up and started helping to fill out sections on raider101.com. It's interesting, but using a wiki for this has actually brought up a problem I hadn't anticipated. I've come to the conclusion that this project really isn't about the "addition" of knowledge, it's actually about the "subtraction" of knowledge.

That sounds weird, but think about Elitist Jerks for a second. The problem with EJ is that there is too much information. The problem for a new player is that they look at it and are overwhelmed with all the decision points that need to taken into consideration. What I'm trying to do is take that mass of information and cut ruthlessly, to pare things back to the essentials.

For example, looking at poisons for a Combat Rogue, EJ lists three different possible combinations. Which combination is the "best" depends on your weapon type and speed of the off-hand weapon. I just put down the most-common combination at Raider101.

Is that over-simplifying things? Maybe. Some decision points are essential.

Anyways, the thing about wikis is that they make it very easy for anyone to add information. But all those additions have weight. Person A adds something small to one section. Person B adds something small to another section. Person C expands on something else. All those additions have weight, and eventually you end up with the Too Much Information problem again.

It is interesting how the nature of wikis works against an editor. But I think editing is important. Sometimes, what is cut is more important than what is left in, and the "shape" and flow of the article is as important as the content.

I'm not sure how I'm going to approach this with Raider101. I've basically locked a few of the more complete articles (all paladin specs, combat rogues, mutilate rogues). But that means that people can't make corrections or add things which need to added. Of course, who determines what needs to be added is the central question.