As you can probably guess, this is part II of the Potential PvE buffs post.
So, being the tree that most everyone agrees is in need of the most love, how would I go about making Ret on par with Holy and Prot?
http://talents.unleashedgaming.net/?p=vt&i=19391 I have decided to make a few modifications to the talent trees I posted in part I, inspired in part by the PTR changes, and in part by a closer look at some of the more functional hybrid talent trees, especially the druid Feral tree. Since I've made so many changes from the baseline talent tree, I'll be going tier by tier describing every talent (since I modified nearly all of them in some way). Before I get in to that though, I feel I should provide a quick explanation on why I changed the ret tree the way I did.
I started out with three main assumptions: 1) Paladins are never going to be a true DPS class, so any fixes to the ret tree can't involve massive boosts to DPS, 2) The main purpose of the Paladin is to be the guardian of his allies, and 3) Retribution paladins want to be primarily focused on melee combat.
Assumption 1 is pretty simple. Blizzard has stated ad nauseum that paladins are a Tank/Heal hybrid, so we won't be getting DPS that is on par with other classes. However, this doesn't mean that ret paladin DPS is in no need of improvement
Assumption 2 is a bit of a leap on my part, but judging by the class description and what has been stated as our two main roles, it seems reasonable. The Holy Paladin protects his allies by keeping them alive, and the Protection Paladin protects his allies by tanking. So how does the ret paladin protect his allies? Right now, the answer is "not very well". One could argue that by killing enemies before they can harm your allies, you would be doing an excellent job of protecting them, but that violates assumption 1.
Assumption 3 is also pretty obvious. A classic ret paladin complaint involves having to "stand around in the back". And, while on 90% of encounters the only thing making you stand in the back is yourself, one can still see that what ret paladins want is to be up in the fray, bashing skulls and maybe tossing out an occasional heal or cleanse, instead of primarily casting heals and cleansing while making some weak melee attacks with a 1-Hander.
In order to create a tree that was in line with these three guiding factors, I decided to make a tree that functioned similar to the druid feral tree: Both tanking and Melee DPS in the same tree, with an emphasis on flexibility between these two roles. Now, since paladins already have a tanking tree, I deliberately made ret more focused on melee DPS, with the ability to function as either an offtank or as a critical member of the MT group during a raid setting, and as a "5th man" in a 5 or 10 man setting.
Now, without further ado, the talents:
Tire 1:
Deflection: I moved this talent here primarily for prot paladins.
Benediction: This talent remains unchanged
Tier 2:
Might of the Blessed: This was just something I threw in to combat bad itemization and to enhance the hybrid nature of the ret paladin. It won't make a huge difference in damage output or healing output, but one of the problems that the retribution tree suffered from was having too many "must-have talents", so my goal was to compact them and add some nice choices for filler that didn't make ret pallies feel as if they need to invest a huge amount of points in the tree.
Conviction: Moved here from tier 3. I always felt that it was far too deep in the tree, given that other melee classes get their crit talents in tier 1.
Improved Seal of the Crusader: Unchanged. This is a nice option for a holy build and again, I didn't want to make every talent a must-have.
Tier 3:
Vindication: I decided to give this some more consistency. It could potentially be a very nice debuff to have in 5-mans, but the random nature of it made it not so useful, since it could fall off when you least wanted it to.
Seal of Command: After a lot of internal debating, I decided to change this to a nice consistent source of damage instead of the current slot-machine. This SoC would have a spellpower coefficient similar to SoR, but it would probably be around 75% as high. This also has the side effect of reducing the amazing but extremely rare retribution burst damage combos, which leaves room to up the overall sustained damage (At 40% it would be roughly a 29% increase in SoC DPS with a 3.8 speed weapon, and an even larger increase with a faster weapon). Essentially, with this change, your SoC crits will be doing about 14% more than your old SoC hits, however SoC will proc on every swing. In addition, I decided to up the base damage of the judgment while removing the bonus damage from a stunned target. The stun bonus to JoC was originally implemented to give ret paladins a method of controllable burst damage. Now that we have crusader strike, this is much less necessary. The net result of this change is that you lose roughly 100 damage from your maximum stunned judgment hits, but you gain roughly 150 to each unstunned judgment, so overall sustained damage gets another nice boost.
Improved Blessing of Might: Moved here from tier 1, cost reduced to 3 points for the same effect. This simply frees up 2 points for the raiding ret paladin to spend elsewhere.
Tier 4:
Eye for an Eye: I expanded this talent to three points, and added a small mana burn effect to the dispeller of any of your spells. This will not be a magic bullet like UA, but it will make purge/dispell spam a less viable option in small-scale PvP.
Improved Judgment: Moved this down to tier 4 and combined the effects with the old Sanctified Judgment. More point compaction.
Crusade: Unchanged.
Tier 5:
Weapon Specialization: Changed this to include 1-Handed weapons. Mostly intended as a bit of a buff to the ret-spec tank.
Sanctity Aura: Unchanged.
Improved Sanctity Aura: Modified to increase healing based on your strength instead a flat percentage. This is to keep healadins away from it, as well as to make one of the best benefits of a ret paladin dependent on that paladin wearing ret gear, not healing gear, thus providing more incentive to have the ret paladin play as a damage-dealer.
Tier 6:
Vengeance: I really like what blizzard did with the stacking 15% Vengeance on PTRs. It really adds a lot more consistency to PvE damage, without adding too much to PvP burst damage. However, I believe that it really needs to increase healing as well as damage. This change will allow the ret paladin to drop some powerful spot heals, but only if he is meleeing. Combined with the Crusader Strike change, this allows the paladin to provide some serious (though occasional) help to healers in a pinch, without forcing him to break off his attacks for a long period of time.
Focused Will: The PPM on this would be 12, so it essentially gives you 10% of your strength as MP/5, but only while meleeing. This should help out with the mana issues that many ret paladins have.
Tier 7:
Sanctified Judgment: Modified to work with JoJ, JoL and JoW as well as JotC. Often times, it is more useful to your group or raid to have a judgment other than Crusader on the target. This allows you to use whatever Judgment the situation calls for, without giving up your 3% crit debuff.
Repentance: Unchanged
Divine Purpose; Changed to reduce chance to be crit by 3%. This allows a ret paladin in an offtank role to wear more DPS-oriented gear so that he is more useful when his target dies and he switches to DPSing, similar to how a feral druid can go to cat form and do some DPS when his target dies. It is also deep enough in the tree that a prot pally would lose more than he gains to pick it up, which should keep the warriors happy.
Tier 8:
Fanaticism: First off, let me start by saying that, from a sustained DPS perspective, the current Fanaticism is really, really bad. Just to give you an idea of how bad, the rogue talent "Improved Backstab" provides twice the benefit to a much higher damage ability that can be used roughly 33% more often, and it is a tier 2 talent that costs only 3 talent points. In most cases, Fanaticism works out to be a single-digit DPS increase, which is absolutely pitiful for an 8th tier talent. So instead, I decided to turn it into an awesome tanking and tank-support ability that also provides a nice survivability boost for an arena team. Basically, your party gains a large amount of armor and takes reduced damage from spells, but once again, only if you are wearing retribution-oriented gear. In 5-mans and raids, this provides a very nice mitigation buff for your tank (whether the tank happens to be yourself or another player), and in PvP this allows you to protect your group and kill people at the same time. And as a bonus, it also reduces threat generated by 15% when Righteous Fury is not active, boosting potential Paladin DPS much higher than the current fanaticism can.
Tier 9:
Crusader Strike: This was a nice addition to the retribution tree, finally giving paladins some real control over their damage. Unfortunately, it really feels lacking for a 41 point talent, and it tends to encourage a very selfish, warrior-like playstyle. So, I decided to add a buff that would allow you to cast a very fast heal after hitting crusader strike, which means that instead of having to chose between healing that priest that is taking heavy focus fire and dropping a CS on your target to finish him off, you can do both (1.5 seconds for the GCD on CS plus the 1 second cast time on Holy Light means that your heal will land at the same time as if you had decided to start it before hitting CS). It also means that when a tank takes a huge spike of damage, you stand a good chance of being able to land a very big heal in a very short amount of time, potentially avoiding a wipe. Finally, Crusader Strike would cause high threat while Righteous fury is active, giving it some use as a tanking ability.
So there you have it, that is how I would re-do the retribution tree. Again, it is critical to keep in mind that all numbers are very rough, my goal here is to provide general concepts for abilities.
Illumination Nerf is Fine, L2P
Seriously, I'm getting kind of tired of hearing people bitch about how worthless everything related to paladin healing is, just because one ability had it's effectiveness cut in half. Guess what? Paladins are not suddenly second-rate healers just because we have to use some mana management now. And while many paladins (such as myself) can currently top healing charts with minimal to no mana potion usage, others apparently cannot.
So, what follows are 5 quick and easy tips on how to compensate for the illumination nerf that don't involve "lolz lern2pot newb!". I should note that it is assumed you will be using standard consumables in a raid or difficult heroic dungeon scenario. (mageblood and an adept's/healing power elixir, and a mana oil. You can also be a cheapskate and opt for a flask of mighty restoration over the elixirs, but a dual elixir combo will deliver the best performance) If you are not using them when needed, then start doing so. Elixirs can be pricey, but they're usually cheaper than a series of wipes.
1. Spec for (and learn how to properly use) Divine Illumination. I am constantly amazed at how under-rated this talent is. It's like having your own mini-innervate, with half the cooldown. Need to drop a big bomb heal on the tank? DI+DF and it's free, and your next few heals are half off as well. In a situation where you have to spam alot of heals (such as after a shatter on Gruul, during the phase 2 -> phase 3 transition on Magtheridon, or when you hit a %-based enrage and can't afford to take the chance of canceling a heal to conserve mana), pop DI and you'll save a shitload of mana. This one talent can stretch your mana pool a long way.
2. Stop stacking spell crit at the expense of MP/5. Yeah, a lot pally gear has spell crit but no MP/5. There is also a good chunk of priest/druid gear that has spirit but no MP/5 either. The moral? not every piece will be exactly what you want it to be, that is why there are socket gems, enchants, and all of the other gear slots: so you can customize your gear as you see fit. It can be tough to find healing plate with MP/5, but there is some out there, and most of your other slots will be fairly easy to to find MP/5 on, since it is a universally desired stat for healing. You can also resort to *gag* wearing shaman gear, but make sure you don't steal it from any shammies. Its rude, and shaman don't exactly have many other good options for healing gear.
And hey, guess what? Crit heals still restore mana! If you're smart and have been maintaining a balanced ratio of spell crit and MP/5, you will still have pretty good endurance.
I will take an aside here to say that I agree that blizzard should re-evaluate their itemization of healadin gear, perhaps replacing some of the spell crit with MP/5, but please stop suggesting asinine things like removing all of our spell crit, and replacing it with MP/5, or even spirit (WTF? Are you some dumbass priest re-roll or something? Paladins get almost zero benefits from spirit)
3. Learn how to be a bomb healer. If you don't know what I mean, watch a priest/druid/shaman heal. If you figure out how to use downranking to your advantage (pro tip: rank 7 HL is your friend), and how to anticipate when a tank will need healing, as well as having the reflexes to cancel your heal if the tank is at full health (i.e. he parried/dodged or another healer got him back to full before you did), you can save a ton of mana over just spamming heals. This also leaves time in between heals for you to do the fourth thing:
4. Melee using SoW and JoW. *Gasp* play like a paladin instead of a priest? I know, it might sound like a frightening concept, but the front lines are (with a few exceptions) an ideal place for a paladin to be. The extra mana regen you get from SoW and JoW, combined with the mana saved from constantly re-casting your judgment, can really add up fast. And should you go OOM with a pot timer down, you're already doing something to actively regenerate your mana! Obviously, this is not advisable on mobs that have heavy PBAoE damage, or where there are strict positioning requirements that limit the amount of people in melee range (think Phase 1 C'thun, or Hydros), but on the other 90% of encounters, get up there where you belong!
So how do you do this amazing feat, deemed impossible by many? Simple. Target a mob (usually the boss, but you should use your judgment (god I am so funny) as to which mob to melee). Then, seal up with wisdom, judge wisdom (or let another paladin judge wisdom if you're supposed to be doing another judgment), and auto-swing until somebody needs heals. The next part is where it gets really complex. If you use a click-casting mod, you simply heal as normal, but if you don't, here's how it works: Press the button for the heal you want to cast, then click on the raid frame of the person you want to cast it on. Tough, I know, but with a little practice you'll get the hang of it. After that, re-seal whenever you get a lull in the healing, wash, rinse, and repeat until its time to pass out loot.
5. If you still have problems, look for a shadow priest or a shaman (preferably one with mana tide, but if you're doing a 5-man and don't want another healer, then just find an elemental shaman to DPS, and make sure he drops mana spring). Right now, these are a luxury, but post-patch, if your gear is lacking, don't be afraid to tell your group or raid leader that you need a bit of a boost to get the job done.
Your ezmode healing is gone, get over it and start making a conscious effort like every other healer. Yeah, having to pay attention is tough, but if you want a class where you can watch TV and still play at high efficiency, then a paladin is not for you. Go play a hunter or something.
So, what follows are 5 quick and easy tips on how to compensate for the illumination nerf that don't involve "lolz lern2pot newb!". I should note that it is assumed you will be using standard consumables in a raid or difficult heroic dungeon scenario. (mageblood and an adept's/healing power elixir, and a mana oil. You can also be a cheapskate and opt for a flask of mighty restoration over the elixirs, but a dual elixir combo will deliver the best performance) If you are not using them when needed, then start doing so. Elixirs can be pricey, but they're usually cheaper than a series of wipes.
1. Spec for (and learn how to properly use) Divine Illumination. I am constantly amazed at how under-rated this talent is. It's like having your own mini-innervate, with half the cooldown. Need to drop a big bomb heal on the tank? DI+DF and it's free, and your next few heals are half off as well. In a situation where you have to spam alot of heals (such as after a shatter on Gruul, during the phase 2 -> phase 3 transition on Magtheridon, or when you hit a %-based enrage and can't afford to take the chance of canceling a heal to conserve mana), pop DI and you'll save a shitload of mana. This one talent can stretch your mana pool a long way.
2. Stop stacking spell crit at the expense of MP/5. Yeah, a lot pally gear has spell crit but no MP/5. There is also a good chunk of priest/druid gear that has spirit but no MP/5 either. The moral? not every piece will be exactly what you want it to be, that is why there are socket gems, enchants, and all of the other gear slots: so you can customize your gear as you see fit. It can be tough to find healing plate with MP/5, but there is some out there, and most of your other slots will be fairly easy to to find MP/5 on, since it is a universally desired stat for healing. You can also resort to *gag* wearing shaman gear, but make sure you don't steal it from any shammies. Its rude, and shaman don't exactly have many other good options for healing gear.
And hey, guess what? Crit heals still restore mana! If you're smart and have been maintaining a balanced ratio of spell crit and MP/5, you will still have pretty good endurance.
I will take an aside here to say that I agree that blizzard should re-evaluate their itemization of healadin gear, perhaps replacing some of the spell crit with MP/5, but please stop suggesting asinine things like removing all of our spell crit, and replacing it with MP/5, or even spirit (WTF? Are you some dumbass priest re-roll or something? Paladins get almost zero benefits from spirit)
3. Learn how to be a bomb healer. If you don't know what I mean, watch a priest/druid/shaman heal. If you figure out how to use downranking to your advantage (pro tip: rank 7 HL is your friend), and how to anticipate when a tank will need healing, as well as having the reflexes to cancel your heal if the tank is at full health (i.e. he parried/dodged or another healer got him back to full before you did), you can save a ton of mana over just spamming heals. This also leaves time in between heals for you to do the fourth thing:
4. Melee using SoW and JoW. *Gasp* play like a paladin instead of a priest? I know, it might sound like a frightening concept, but the front lines are (with a few exceptions) an ideal place for a paladin to be. The extra mana regen you get from SoW and JoW, combined with the mana saved from constantly re-casting your judgment, can really add up fast. And should you go OOM with a pot timer down, you're already doing something to actively regenerate your mana! Obviously, this is not advisable on mobs that have heavy PBAoE damage, or where there are strict positioning requirements that limit the amount of people in melee range (think Phase 1 C'thun, or Hydros), but on the other 90% of encounters, get up there where you belong!
So how do you do this amazing feat, deemed impossible by many? Simple. Target a mob (usually the boss, but you should use your judgment (god I am so funny) as to which mob to melee). Then, seal up with wisdom, judge wisdom (or let another paladin judge wisdom if you're supposed to be doing another judgment), and auto-swing until somebody needs heals. The next part is where it gets really complex. If you use a click-casting mod, you simply heal as normal, but if you don't, here's how it works: Press the button for the heal you want to cast, then click on the raid frame of the person you want to cast it on. Tough, I know, but with a little practice you'll get the hang of it. After that, re-seal whenever you get a lull in the healing, wash, rinse, and repeat until its time to pass out loot.
5. If you still have problems, look for a shadow priest or a shaman (preferably one with mana tide, but if you're doing a 5-man and don't want another healer, then just find an elemental shaman to DPS, and make sure he drops mana spring). Right now, these are a luxury, but post-patch, if your gear is lacking, don't be afraid to tell your group or raid leader that you need a bit of a boost to get the job done.
Your ezmode healing is gone, get over it and start making a conscious effort like every other healer. Yeah, having to pay attention is tough, but if you want a class where you can watch TV and still play at high efficiency, then a paladin is not for you. Go play a hunter or something.
Potential PvE Pally Buffs: Moving from good to great. Part I
So, after blasting people for making idiotic suggestions about what the class should look like, and how it should be changed, I suppose it is only fair to put my own ideas out there for criticism. In this two-part article, I will outline and explain my suggestions for how the three trees and playstyles we have should be enhanced. This is not intended as a "Blizzard: Follow this plan to the letter to fix paladins", but rather a set of suggestions for how to make the paladin perform as blizzard seems to intend, i.e. as a Tank/Heal hybrid which is focused on melee combat.
It is important to note that, as my title implies, the paladin class is really not all that bad. 2 out of our 3 trees are quite viable in a raid setting, and while (as Blizzard has acknowledged) paladin tanking needs some improvement, the tankadins who have MTd karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and are starting in serpentshrine demonstrate that paladin tanking is at least functional. The only tree in need of any serious work is Retribution, and even then, the main problem is not that ret spec brings nothing to raids (Sanctified crusader and improved sanctity aura are both amazing talents), but that the talents in ret do not sufficiently enhance the ret playstle of being not just engaged in melee combat (as all paladins should be anyway), but focusing heavily on melee combat, and so it is currently of dubious value to a raid leader.
This first portion of the article will cover the Holy and Protection talent trees. Retribution, given the larger amount of work required, will be the sole feature of part II.
The Trees
http://talents.unleashedgaming.net/?p=vt&i=16858
These are my rough suggestions for how the paladin talent trees should be re-structured. It is important to note three things:
A) These changes are mainly geared towards PvE, with PvP considerations being secondary. 2 years has soundly demonstrated that Blizzard intends for WoW to be primarily a PvE game, with PvP being a secondary option for endgame players. Perhaps if WAR ends up being as amazing as it promises, and blizzard starts losing a large amount of customers, this will change, but until then it is unreasonable to expect that blizzard will balance the PvP game at the expense of the PvE game. Also, since I am primarily a PvE player, this is more my area of expertise.
B) All numbers, and indeed all changes themselves, are pretty rough. The purpose is not to provide a set of talent trees and base abilities that, when imported into the game as-is, will make the paladin class 100% balanced. My goal is to provide concepts for talent/ability changes, and as such, most of my new talents/abilities will need to be tuned should they be implemented.
C) Instead of taking the time to create each talent individually, I used UG's preset paladin template, which has quite a few errors. I tried to fix all the ones I saw, but I probably didn't get all of them, so assume that all talents function as they currently do, unless I specifically sate that I changed the talent.
Holy
The first tree/playstyle to address is the Holy tree and the Healadin playstyle. For the most part, the talent tree is fine as-is. There are some weak talents that could use addressing, but overall, the holy tree is still a perfectly serviceable tree, and is, in my opinion, the strongest of our 3 talent trees. As for the playstyle, I would like to see some changes so that melee combat is more integral to a healadin than just saving mana on re-casting judgments (and potentially getting a little extra mana regen through seal of wisdom), but, truth be told, even that ought to be enough motivation to put your hammer to use in any encounter that you can.
Protection
The second tree/playstyle is Protection and the Tankadin. The changes required are not simply just fixing some of the weak talents, but also fixing paladin tanking itemization, as well as giving us some baseline tools so that a Holy or Retribution paladin has the same tanking prowess as an arms or fury warrior.
First off is the talent tree. There are 4 changes that I would make to the tree.
1) Combine Improved Retribution Aura with improved Devotion aura. Giving a little more punch to a talent that is often overlooked never hurt anyone, and I've always believed that improved ret aura should be in the prot tree anyway, since the aura is mostly employed by prot paladins.
2) Change Redoubt to "Divine Aegis", which increases shield block chance by 5% for 5 talents. (For those of you, like myself, who like redoubt, don't worry, it isn't going anywhere) One of the things that creates the "Avoidance Gap" between warriors and paladins is the lack of a +5% block talent. Not anymore.
3) Change 1-Handed Weapon spec. to "Guardian's Fury", which increases holy damage dealt by 10% for 5 points. Not only does this make more sense, given that melee damage is not a major source of paladin threat like it is for warriors, but this also gives prot spec a bit more oomph in pvp.
4) Changing Weapon Expertise to "Divine Precision", which increases chance to hit with spells by 5%, and reduces the mana cost of your non-healing spells by 10% for 5 points. This seemed like a good addition to counter the difficulty (in fact, the impossibility) of obtaining tank gear with spell hit, as well as helping out with the mana starvation faced by tankadins in non-heroic 5-mans.
The next step is itemization, which has been covered ad nauseum by the community, and is (theoretically) being fixed by blizzard in the next patch. The gist is more stamina, more mitigation, less intellect, no MP/5 (at least on raid tanking sets), and perhaps slightly less spell damage.
The final step is base abilities. I have often thought to myself how odd it is that the Tank/Heal Hybrid gets fewer mitigation abilities than the Tank/DPS hybrid (warriors). In fact, we get none whatsoever. The only baseline abilities given to assist paladin tanking are a taunt, and a spell that, when combined with our other abilities, allows us to hold hate. And while protection provides some of these "missing" abilities, the ones provided are inferior to the ones possessed by warriors, especially protection warriors.
The solution is to give paladins some of these tools, so that we can be the capable tanks that blizzard intends for us to be.
The first, and most important, should be a shield block of some sort. My suggestion:
Redoubt
4% of Base Mana
Instant Cast 10 Second Cooldown
Requires Shields
Increases chance to block by 40% for 10 seconds, but will only block 2 attacks.
This allows a paladin of any spec to push crushing blows off of the hit table, and thus, like an arms or fury warrior, be capable of tanking raid bosses without the constantly looming spectre of a string of crushings, leading to a dead tank and a wipe. Granted, it will be more difficult to do so, but is is also more difficult for arms/fury warriors to hold hate than a holy or ret paladin. You may have also noticed that I changed Holy Shield to work off of this ability as opposed to being a stand-alone skill, which is simply for convenience. You'll also notice that when redoubt is combined with Holy Shield and Libram of Repentance, using redoubt will confer the same 75% block, with 4 blocks every 10 seconds, as improved Shield Block. This will remove the avoidance gap between tankadins and prot warriors, thus removing one of the main obstacles to paladins being competitive raid tanks.
The second change would be to re-work the current Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Blood system, by making them both be essentially the same skill, but retaining their unique icons and animations, similar to Bloodlust/Heroism. Having faction-specific abilities was a bad move, as priest racials clearly demonstrate, and so it makes little sense to stick paladins with them. And for those horde ret pallies out there who like the current seal of blood, worry not, for I would give SoC the same sort of functionality.
Right now, I am torn between preserving the unique, yet dubiously useful functionality of SoV (While in typical single-target tanking gear it will do slightly more TPS than SoR, but it comes with a large drawback: random abilities are not good for tanking), and changing it to something like this:
Seal of Vengeance/Blood
250 Mana
Instant Cast
Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing melee attacks to apply the Holy/Bloody Vengeance debuff, which stacks up to 5 times and lasts 15 seconds. In addition, each melee attack deals an additional 8 to 11 Holy damage per stack of Holy/Bloody Vengeance on the target. Damage caused by Seal of Vengeance/Blood generates 40% additional threat. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec.
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing 36 Holy damage per application of Holy/Bloody Vengeance. Damage caused by Judgment of Vengeance/Blood generates 40% additional threat.
The idea here is to give the tankadin a seal/judgment combo that generates more single-target hate than SoR, without out-DPSing it, and while providing the same visual indicator for DPS as sunder and lacerate. The seal coefficient would work in the same way as SoR, but it would be 3/4ths as large, and there would be no extra benefit for 2-Handers. The judgment coefficient would be 55%.
Thus, once you got 5 stacks up, SoV/SoB would be doing 75% as much damage per swing as SoR, but would still cause 12.5% more threat. The judgment would cause ~15.6% more threat base, and would cause roughly 5.5% more threat from spellpower, making this the unquestioned seal of choice for single-target (i.e. raid) tanking.
Another potential ability, though not as crucial:
Guardian's Resolve
15% of Base Mana
Instant Cast 5 Minute Cooldown
Requires Shields
Reduces the damage from the next incoming attack by 90%. Lasts 10 Seconds. Causes Forbearance.
This is essentially the Tankadin "Oh Shit!" button. It is not nearly as powerful as last stand or Shield Wall, but it can be used more often, and when combined with Ardent Defender, it can potentially allow your healers to recover from your near death in the same way as last stand and shield wall do. The Forbearance effect is there to prevent it from being an un-needed buff for PvP Holy Paladins, and will have little effect on prot tanking, since the time when you need to save your ass is usually near the end of the fight, during an enrage, when threat is already firmly established (i.e. you don't need AW, and probably haven't used it within the last minute)
That's all for now, Retribution fixes coming in part II. Until then, flame on.
It is important to note that, as my title implies, the paladin class is really not all that bad. 2 out of our 3 trees are quite viable in a raid setting, and while (as Blizzard has acknowledged) paladin tanking needs some improvement, the tankadins who have MTd karazhan, Gruul's Lair, and are starting in serpentshrine demonstrate that paladin tanking is at least functional. The only tree in need of any serious work is Retribution, and even then, the main problem is not that ret spec brings nothing to raids (Sanctified crusader and improved sanctity aura are both amazing talents), but that the talents in ret do not sufficiently enhance the ret playstle of being not just engaged in melee combat (as all paladins should be anyway), but focusing heavily on melee combat, and so it is currently of dubious value to a raid leader.
This first portion of the article will cover the Holy and Protection talent trees. Retribution, given the larger amount of work required, will be the sole feature of part II.
The Trees
http://talents.unleashedgaming.net/?p=vt&i=16858
These are my rough suggestions for how the paladin talent trees should be re-structured. It is important to note three things:
A) These changes are mainly geared towards PvE, with PvP considerations being secondary. 2 years has soundly demonstrated that Blizzard intends for WoW to be primarily a PvE game, with PvP being a secondary option for endgame players. Perhaps if WAR ends up being as amazing as it promises, and blizzard starts losing a large amount of customers, this will change, but until then it is unreasonable to expect that blizzard will balance the PvP game at the expense of the PvE game. Also, since I am primarily a PvE player, this is more my area of expertise.
B) All numbers, and indeed all changes themselves, are pretty rough. The purpose is not to provide a set of talent trees and base abilities that, when imported into the game as-is, will make the paladin class 100% balanced. My goal is to provide concepts for talent/ability changes, and as such, most of my new talents/abilities will need to be tuned should they be implemented.
C) Instead of taking the time to create each talent individually, I used UG's preset paladin template, which has quite a few errors. I tried to fix all the ones I saw, but I probably didn't get all of them, so assume that all talents function as they currently do, unless I specifically sate that I changed the talent.
Holy
The first tree/playstyle to address is the Holy tree and the Healadin playstyle. For the most part, the talent tree is fine as-is. There are some weak talents that could use addressing, but overall, the holy tree is still a perfectly serviceable tree, and is, in my opinion, the strongest of our 3 talent trees. As for the playstyle, I would like to see some changes so that melee combat is more integral to a healadin than just saving mana on re-casting judgments (and potentially getting a little extra mana regen through seal of wisdom), but, truth be told, even that ought to be enough motivation to put your hammer to use in any encounter that you can.
Protection
The second tree/playstyle is Protection and the Tankadin. The changes required are not simply just fixing some of the weak talents, but also fixing paladin tanking itemization, as well as giving us some baseline tools so that a Holy or Retribution paladin has the same tanking prowess as an arms or fury warrior.
First off is the talent tree. There are 4 changes that I would make to the tree.
1) Combine Improved Retribution Aura with improved Devotion aura. Giving a little more punch to a talent that is often overlooked never hurt anyone, and I've always believed that improved ret aura should be in the prot tree anyway, since the aura is mostly employed by prot paladins.
2) Change Redoubt to "Divine Aegis", which increases shield block chance by 5% for 5 talents. (For those of you, like myself, who like redoubt, don't worry, it isn't going anywhere) One of the things that creates the "Avoidance Gap" between warriors and paladins is the lack of a +5% block talent. Not anymore.
3) Change 1-Handed Weapon spec. to "Guardian's Fury", which increases holy damage dealt by 10% for 5 points. Not only does this make more sense, given that melee damage is not a major source of paladin threat like it is for warriors, but this also gives prot spec a bit more oomph in pvp.
4) Changing Weapon Expertise to "Divine Precision", which increases chance to hit with spells by 5%, and reduces the mana cost of your non-healing spells by 10% for 5 points. This seemed like a good addition to counter the difficulty (in fact, the impossibility) of obtaining tank gear with spell hit, as well as helping out with the mana starvation faced by tankadins in non-heroic 5-mans.
The next step is itemization, which has been covered ad nauseum by the community, and is (theoretically) being fixed by blizzard in the next patch. The gist is more stamina, more mitigation, less intellect, no MP/5 (at least on raid tanking sets), and perhaps slightly less spell damage.
The final step is base abilities. I have often thought to myself how odd it is that the Tank/Heal Hybrid gets fewer mitigation abilities than the Tank/DPS hybrid (warriors). In fact, we get none whatsoever. The only baseline abilities given to assist paladin tanking are a taunt, and a spell that, when combined with our other abilities, allows us to hold hate. And while protection provides some of these "missing" abilities, the ones provided are inferior to the ones possessed by warriors, especially protection warriors.
The solution is to give paladins some of these tools, so that we can be the capable tanks that blizzard intends for us to be.
The first, and most important, should be a shield block of some sort. My suggestion:
Redoubt
4% of Base Mana
Instant Cast 10 Second Cooldown
Requires Shields
Increases chance to block by 40% for 10 seconds, but will only block 2 attacks.
This allows a paladin of any spec to push crushing blows off of the hit table, and thus, like an arms or fury warrior, be capable of tanking raid bosses without the constantly looming spectre of a string of crushings, leading to a dead tank and a wipe. Granted, it will be more difficult to do so, but is is also more difficult for arms/fury warriors to hold hate than a holy or ret paladin. You may have also noticed that I changed Holy Shield to work off of this ability as opposed to being a stand-alone skill, which is simply for convenience. You'll also notice that when redoubt is combined with Holy Shield and Libram of Repentance, using redoubt will confer the same 75% block, with 4 blocks every 10 seconds, as improved Shield Block. This will remove the avoidance gap between tankadins and prot warriors, thus removing one of the main obstacles to paladins being competitive raid tanks.
The second change would be to re-work the current Seal of Vengeance/Seal of Blood system, by making them both be essentially the same skill, but retaining their unique icons and animations, similar to Bloodlust/Heroism. Having faction-specific abilities was a bad move, as priest racials clearly demonstrate, and so it makes little sense to stick paladins with them. And for those horde ret pallies out there who like the current seal of blood, worry not, for I would give SoC the same sort of functionality.
Right now, I am torn between preserving the unique, yet dubiously useful functionality of SoV (While in typical single-target tanking gear it will do slightly more TPS than SoR, but it comes with a large drawback: random abilities are not good for tanking), and changing it to something like this:
Seal of Vengeance/Blood
250 Mana
Instant Cast
Fills the Paladin with holy power, causing melee attacks to apply the Holy/Bloody Vengeance debuff, which stacks up to 5 times and lasts 15 seconds. In addition, each melee attack deals an additional 8 to 11 Holy damage per stack of Holy/Bloody Vengeance on the target. Damage caused by Seal of Vengeance/Blood generates 40% additional threat. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time. Lasts 30 sec.
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy, instantly causing 36 Holy damage per application of Holy/Bloody Vengeance. Damage caused by Judgment of Vengeance/Blood generates 40% additional threat.
The idea here is to give the tankadin a seal/judgment combo that generates more single-target hate than SoR, without out-DPSing it, and while providing the same visual indicator for DPS as sunder and lacerate. The seal coefficient would work in the same way as SoR, but it would be 3/4ths as large, and there would be no extra benefit for 2-Handers. The judgment coefficient would be 55%.
Thus, once you got 5 stacks up, SoV/SoB would be doing 75% as much damage per swing as SoR, but would still cause 12.5% more threat. The judgment would cause ~15.6% more threat base, and would cause roughly 5.5% more threat from spellpower, making this the unquestioned seal of choice for single-target (i.e. raid) tanking.
Another potential ability, though not as crucial:
Guardian's Resolve
15% of Base Mana
Instant Cast 5 Minute Cooldown
Requires Shields
Reduces the damage from the next incoming attack by 90%. Lasts 10 Seconds. Causes Forbearance.
This is essentially the Tankadin "Oh Shit!" button. It is not nearly as powerful as last stand or Shield Wall, but it can be used more often, and when combined with Ardent Defender, it can potentially allow your healers to recover from your near death in the same way as last stand and shield wall do. The Forbearance effect is there to prevent it from being an un-needed buff for PvP Holy Paladins, and will have little effect on prot tanking, since the time when you need to save your ass is usually near the end of the fight, during an enrage, when threat is already firmly established (i.e. you don't need AW, and probably haven't used it within the last minute)
That's all for now, Retribution fixes coming in part II. Until then, flame on.
You are a Paladin...
...You are not an arms warrior. For the love of God/Uther/RaptorJesus, stop playing like an arms warrior, and stop asking for blizzard to turn ret paladins into arms warriors. Ret paladins are (as they should be) a unique beast, which takes a bit more subtlety and knowledge to play properly than just mashing crusader strike.
Yes, I know, both classes wear plate, and both classes favor big, slow, heavy-hitting 2-handed weapons, and both need hefty amounts of AP and crit to perform at their best. This is where the similarity ends. Please stop rolling around in warrior gear with 4K mana and 50 spell damage, auto-swinging away at the nearest player (especially if its a shield wearing paladin. Really, unless you've got a deep thunder and amazing gear, you're nothing but a nuisance to me. Go bug a priest or something). And stop insisting that the life of a ret paladin is soooooo terrible because nobody will take your sorry ass to even a non-heroic 5-man. You make the talented ret paladins out there look bad just because they share a spec with you.
And please, stop posting your inane "improvements" to the ret tree that involve moving reckoning to ret, giving ret pallies a shadowform, changing crusader strike to a 31 point, 11 point, or even a base ability, putting AW as a ret talent, swapping deflection with precision, etc. Ret is not supposed to be the only tree with damage. Ret is not supposed to be a DPS tree. Ret is (in theory, at least. More on this particular issue in a later article) supposed to be a tree that increases both you and your allies' viability when you are in melee, hitting things with a big 2-hander. Yes, damage is a part of this, but it is only a part. You do not lose all your other class abilities, nor your obligation to look out for your allies (provided they're worth looking out for) just because you spec for crusader strike.
You are a paladin, first and foremost, and that means that you can, and should, do more than just bashing skulls in, even though bashing skulls is the ret paladin's forte.
...You are also not a goddamn priest. Yeah, I know, plate healing gear isn't always easy to come by (I'm stuck with some cloth/chain myself, *grumble*), but you can (and should) wear as much plate armor as possible for a reason: You are supposed to be up front whenever possible in a raid, keeping up a judgment and using your seals to enhance your contribution to the raid. While it is true that A) Seals provide a meager contribution, and B) You can keep up a judgment without meleeing, these facts are merely concessions to the fact that Blizzard's raid designers have some irrational hatred of melee classes (which leads them to do things like giving a considerable amount of bosses 360 degree cleaves of death and other nasty PBAoEs) that they are only now beginning to overcome. And still, the fact of the matter remains that you are more effective when you're hitting things than when you're hanging around in the back with the squishys, and so if you're actually committed to maximizing your contribution, you will be meleeing whenever possible.
And just like the retnubs asking for blizzard to turn the them into an arms warrior, there are a lot of dumbass healadins (somebody needs to coin a good derogatory term for these folks. "Cleric" really doesn't have any teeth) asking for blizzard to turn them into priests. We do not need a HoT, we do not need a group heal, and FFS, stop asking for blizzard to buff Divine Illumination! The holy tree is fine as is (maybe even a bit too powerful, though in the end that is for Blizzard to decide). Blizzard did an excellent job at making us a unique healing class by giving us two spells that, when combined with all the talents in holy, allow us to be potent main healers in our own way. If you can't do the job with the tools you have, then methinks that a dose of L2P is in order.
As for the protadins, well, you guys get off easy for now. I really haven't seen the kind of rampant idiocy that other specs tend to demonstrate.
And to all the good paladins out there: Keep on kicking ass at whatever it is that you like to do.
Yes, I know, both classes wear plate, and both classes favor big, slow, heavy-hitting 2-handed weapons, and both need hefty amounts of AP and crit to perform at their best. This is where the similarity ends. Please stop rolling around in warrior gear with 4K mana and 50 spell damage, auto-swinging away at the nearest player (especially if its a shield wearing paladin. Really, unless you've got a deep thunder and amazing gear, you're nothing but a nuisance to me. Go bug a priest or something). And stop insisting that the life of a ret paladin is soooooo terrible because nobody will take your sorry ass to even a non-heroic 5-man. You make the talented ret paladins out there look bad just because they share a spec with you.
And please, stop posting your inane "improvements" to the ret tree that involve moving reckoning to ret, giving ret pallies a shadowform, changing crusader strike to a 31 point, 11 point, or even a base ability, putting AW as a ret talent, swapping deflection with precision, etc. Ret is not supposed to be the only tree with damage. Ret is not supposed to be a DPS tree. Ret is (in theory, at least. More on this particular issue in a later article) supposed to be a tree that increases both you and your allies' viability when you are in melee, hitting things with a big 2-hander. Yes, damage is a part of this, but it is only a part. You do not lose all your other class abilities, nor your obligation to look out for your allies (provided they're worth looking out for) just because you spec for crusader strike.
You are a paladin, first and foremost, and that means that you can, and should, do more than just bashing skulls in, even though bashing skulls is the ret paladin's forte.
...You are also not a goddamn priest. Yeah, I know, plate healing gear isn't always easy to come by (I'm stuck with some cloth/chain myself, *grumble*), but you can (and should) wear as much plate armor as possible for a reason: You are supposed to be up front whenever possible in a raid, keeping up a judgment and using your seals to enhance your contribution to the raid. While it is true that A) Seals provide a meager contribution, and B) You can keep up a judgment without meleeing, these facts are merely concessions to the fact that Blizzard's raid designers have some irrational hatred of melee classes (which leads them to do things like giving a considerable amount of bosses 360 degree cleaves of death and other nasty PBAoEs) that they are only now beginning to overcome. And still, the fact of the matter remains that you are more effective when you're hitting things than when you're hanging around in the back with the squishys, and so if you're actually committed to maximizing your contribution, you will be meleeing whenever possible.
And just like the retnubs asking for blizzard to turn the them into an arms warrior, there are a lot of dumbass healadins (somebody needs to coin a good derogatory term for these folks. "Cleric" really doesn't have any teeth) asking for blizzard to turn them into priests. We do not need a HoT, we do not need a group heal, and FFS, stop asking for blizzard to buff Divine Illumination! The holy tree is fine as is (maybe even a bit too powerful, though in the end that is for Blizzard to decide). Blizzard did an excellent job at making us a unique healing class by giving us two spells that, when combined with all the talents in holy, allow us to be potent main healers in our own way. If you can't do the job with the tools you have, then methinks that a dose of L2P is in order.
As for the protadins, well, you guys get off easy for now. I really haven't seen the kind of rampant idiocy that other specs tend to demonstrate.
And to all the good paladins out there: Keep on kicking ass at whatever it is that you like to do.
About This Blog:
I'm sure pretty much everyone has heard the saying "Opinions are like assholes - everyone's got one" at least once throughout the course of their lives. And even if you haven't, the fact that you're reading a blog right now means that you've probably come to think along the same lines.
Being an asshole with an opinion on pretty much everything, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I ended up making a blog. My goal is not to create some shrine to my own awesomeness (Because such a shrine would have to be far too large for the hosting limits on free websites like this one, and I'm too goddamn cheap to pay to host anything), but instead to have an outlet for all my various opinions and ideas as relating to World of Warcraft, and the Paladin class in particular. I tend to be a wordy motherfucker, which makes posting anything on the WoW forums a pain, and most intelligent posts tend to get buried in "NERF __________ LOLZ" and "ZOMG FIX _________ OR I QUIT!!" posts anyway.
So here it is, my blog, condescending title and all. Eventually I hope to fill it with the various opinions and useful bits of theorycrafting that nobody feels like filtering through the useless crap on the WoW boards to find.
With all that said, I suppose that its time for the obligatory (I am so funny, right?) "about me" section.
I've been playing World of Warcraft for around 2 years now. For the first 1.5 years or so, my main was a rogue. When I started playing, I had no idea what to do at all. In fact, without my first guild, (the long deceased HardOCP, which was formed on the forums of the somewhat popular computer enthusiast website, [H]ard|OCP) I probably wouldn't have been able to decide on a faction, or even a server. But decide I did, and so the troll rogue Dushkarra was born.
After around 8 months, I wound up in one of the top guilds on Stormscale, JUICE. This was when I really started getting into WoW, specifically endgame raiding and group PvP. While we are no DnT or Nihilium when it comes to PvE progression, we are still usually near the leading edge of raid content. And we make up for not being omgsuperamazing at PvE by rolling a damn fine PvP crew as well. How good, you ask? Within 2 weeks of crossrealm BGs being introduced, the Cyclone battlegroup not only feared/respected our "Elitist Douchebag" WSG crew, but they were the standard by which any other team was judged.
Now, why do I use the term "they" instead of "we" to describe out WSG crew? Because, quite simply, I was growing very bored and frustrated with the role and performance of rogues in PvP at the time, and so I sharded my PvP gear, specced combat daggers, and started leveling a warlock to pwn noobs with in my spare time.
The warlock was entertaining enough in PvP, but all the hassle of trying to gear up both an alt and a main before the new honor system meant that I would never be truely competitive with the warlock, so after awhile, I stopped playing it, and focused more on my rogue. It was at this point that I started to get really bored with WoW, or so I thought. A combination of RL schedule conflicts and disinterest put a real dent in my raiding time, and since I no longer had to farm 250g worth of consumables and repair money a week, I suddenly had a lot more time to just mess around with the game. This was what lead me to my salvation: the paladin class. Before this time, the paladin was the only class that I had never played past level 25-ish. In fact, I had never played one past level 13! So, I decided I would start playing my little pally alt on another server, since everything else had gotten stale.
By the time patch 2.0 rolled around, my paladin was in his low 20s, and I was starting to have alot of fun. I had a few deadmines runs that were quite literally the most fun I'd had on WoW in months. I was main tanking, I was main healing (and on one run, I was doing both!), and in general doing everything that I never could on my rogue or warlock. It was at that point that I realized that what I was bored with wasn't WoW, it was DPS. Pushing backstab and Slice and Dice for 4 hours may help kill bosses, but it had become mind numbingly boring. The next little epiphany happened when I decided to do some WSG matches at level 29. Initially I tried running around killing things like I was used to, but my un-enchanted greens were pretty useless against all the twinks. So I decided to try pvp healing for a change. What I discovered was what I had intuitively known, but never experienced: a well-played healer can make an enormous impact on the course of a PvP match. I watched dozens of flag captures that would never have happened without me, and I laughed as a lot of the twink rogues, used to healers that dropped dead after 2 seconds, spent upwards of a minute trying to kill me (kick notsoez?).
So, I decided that when TBC hit, I would re-roll as a paladin. I spent most of my last month pre-TBC collecting good blues to speed my future main's leveling, collecting the mats for her epic mount, and doing anything else that would in some way help me burn past all the stale 1-60 content and into Outlands.
Several months later, my love of this class has not waned at all. I am currently exploring all that healing has to offer one in this game, but I've also been working on a solid tank set, should I ever get bored with keeping people alive. As for ret, well, I love big numbers as much as the next guy, and I'm sure I'll give in to temptation once I acquire some good ret gear (I vendored all of mine when I hit 70, like an idiot).
With all that out of the way, I feel that, on this, the first post of my blog, I should set out some ground rules for my nonexistent readers to keep in mind when writing their nonexistent replies to my nonexistent articles:
1. If you're going to troll, troll well. I feel that this is important enough to be rule #1, since while your typical, garden-variety troll is nothing but a nuisance, good trolling can really add a lot to a community, imo. (Joram, one of the better trolls on the WoW forums, is always entertaining to read, for instance)
2. Refrain from posting racist/discriminatory language. I honestly don't care about "foul" language in general (god knows I curse like a sailor at times), but I intensely dislike it when people post racial slurs and things of that nature. We're all people here, so take your superiority crap and shove it.
3. Posting mindless personal attacks is just annoying. If you think that I (or another poster) am an idiot, feel free to say so, but you better provide some good reasoning. For example, "You're a goddamn idiot, since you believe that X is true, when clearly it isn't, for reasons Y and Z." is a good post. "your a fuking dumass, palis r supposed to b X but your to stupid to realize it!" is not a good post
4. Which brings me to my final guideline: Write in proper English. I don't care if you have a few spelling or grammar errors, or if you use some common internet abbreviations (imo, iirc, afaik, etc.) but aol-speak, caps-lock, and anything else that wouldn't make it past a 4th grade teacher is, shall we say, distasteful to me.
Any comment that flagrantly violates any of the above guidelines will be having a fun-filled session with my delete key.
Annnnnnnnd that's pretty much it for now. Expect a few angry/bitter rants directed at particular sections of the paladin community soon.
Being an asshole with an opinion on pretty much everything, I suppose it was only a matter of time before I ended up making a blog. My goal is not to create some shrine to my own awesomeness (Because such a shrine would have to be far too large for the hosting limits on free websites like this one, and I'm too goddamn cheap to pay to host anything), but instead to have an outlet for all my various opinions and ideas as relating to World of Warcraft, and the Paladin class in particular. I tend to be a wordy motherfucker, which makes posting anything on the WoW forums a pain, and most intelligent posts tend to get buried in "NERF __________ LOLZ" and "ZOMG FIX _________ OR I QUIT!!" posts anyway.
So here it is, my blog, condescending title and all. Eventually I hope to fill it with the various opinions and useful bits of theorycrafting that nobody feels like filtering through the useless crap on the WoW boards to find.
* * *
With all that said, I suppose that its time for the obligatory (I am so funny, right?) "about me" section.
I've been playing World of Warcraft for around 2 years now. For the first 1.5 years or so, my main was a rogue. When I started playing, I had no idea what to do at all. In fact, without my first guild, (the long deceased HardOCP, which was formed on the forums of the somewhat popular computer enthusiast website, [H]ard|OCP) I probably wouldn't have been able to decide on a faction, or even a server. But decide I did, and so the troll rogue Dushkarra was born.
After around 8 months, I wound up in one of the top guilds on Stormscale, JUICE
Now, why do I use the term "they" instead of "we" to describe out WSG crew? Because, quite simply, I was growing very bored and frustrated with the role and performance of rogues in PvP at the time, and so I sharded my PvP gear, specced combat daggers, and started leveling a warlock to pwn noobs with in my spare time.
The warlock was entertaining enough in PvP, but all the hassle of trying to gear up both an alt and a main before the new honor system meant that I would never be truely competitive with the warlock, so after awhile, I stopped playing it, and focused more on my rogue. It was at this point that I started to get really bored with WoW, or so I thought. A combination of RL schedule conflicts and disinterest put a real dent in my raiding time, and since I no longer had to farm 250g worth of consumables and repair money a week, I suddenly had a lot more time to just mess around with the game. This was what lead me to my salvation: the paladin class. Before this time, the paladin was the only class that I had never played past level 25-ish. In fact, I had never played one past level 13! So, I decided I would start playing my little pally alt on another server, since everything else had gotten stale.
By the time patch 2.0 rolled around, my paladin was in his low 20s, and I was starting to have alot of fun. I had a few deadmines runs that were quite literally the most fun I'd had on WoW in months. I was main tanking, I was main healing (and on one run, I was doing both!), and in general doing everything that I never could on my rogue or warlock. It was at that point that I realized that what I was bored with wasn't WoW, it was DPS. Pushing backstab and Slice and Dice for 4 hours may help kill bosses, but it had become mind numbingly boring. The next little epiphany happened when I decided to do some WSG matches at level 29. Initially I tried running around killing things like I was used to, but my un-enchanted greens were pretty useless against all the twinks. So I decided to try pvp healing for a change. What I discovered was what I had intuitively known, but never experienced: a well-played healer can make an enormous impact on the course of a PvP match. I watched dozens of flag captures that would never have happened without me, and I laughed as a lot of the twink rogues, used to healers that dropped dead after 2 seconds, spent upwards of a minute trying to kill me (kick notsoez?).
So, I decided that when TBC hit, I would re-roll as a paladin. I spent most of my last month pre-TBC collecting good blues to speed my future main's leveling, collecting the mats for her epic mount, and doing anything else that would in some way help me burn past all the stale 1-60 content and into Outlands.
Several months later, my love of this class has not waned at all. I am currently exploring all that healing has to offer one in this game, but I've also been working on a solid tank set, should I ever get bored with keeping people alive. As for ret, well, I love big numbers as much as the next guy, and I'm sure I'll give in to temptation once I acquire some good ret gear (I vendored all of mine when I hit 70, like an idiot).
* * *
With all that out of the way, I feel that, on this, the first post of my blog, I should set out some ground rules for my nonexistent readers to keep in mind when writing their nonexistent replies to my nonexistent articles:
1. If you're going to troll, troll well. I feel that this is important enough to be rule #1, since while your typical, garden-variety troll is nothing but a nuisance, good trolling can really add a lot to a community, imo. (Joram, one of the better trolls on the WoW forums, is always entertaining to read, for instance)
2. Refrain from posting racist/discriminatory language. I honestly don't care about "foul" language in general (god knows I curse like a sailor at times), but I intensely dislike it when people post racial slurs and things of that nature. We're all people here, so take your superiority crap and shove it.
3. Posting mindless personal attacks is just annoying. If you think that I (or another poster) am an idiot, feel free to say so, but you better provide some good reasoning. For example, "You're a goddamn idiot, since you believe that X is true, when clearly it isn't, for reasons Y and Z." is a good post. "your a fuking dumass, palis r supposed to b X but your to stupid to realize it!" is not a good post
4. Which brings me to my final guideline: Write in proper English. I don't care if you have a few spelling or grammar errors, or if you use some common internet abbreviations (imo, iirc, afaik, etc.) but aol-speak, caps-lock, and anything else that wouldn't make it past a 4th grade teacher is, shall we say, distasteful to me.
Any comment that flagrantly violates any of the above guidelines will be having a fun-filled session with my delete key.
Annnnnnnnd that's pretty much it for now. Expect a few angry/bitter rants directed at particular sections of the paladin community soon.
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