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A tale of Forgotten Realms: DDO's Update 18 and the Shadowfell Conspiracy
Dungeons and Dragons Online's second expansion will not be like the first. In fact, Shadowfell Conspiracy might even be seen as a pseudo-sequel to DDO, a game-within-a-game that's offering players a fresh start in a favorite land. When the expansion hits on August 19th, players will be able to ignore all of DDO's Eberron content to start a new character at level 15 in the Forgotten Realms. Between the Forgotten Realms content that Turbine's added to the game in the past year and the new missions coming with Shadowfell Conspiracy, players could conceivably level solely in this setting. It's obvious that Turbine's a little Forgotten-Realms-mad right now, although that's not a bad thing. The setting is a favorite among D&D fans, and while Eberron has its supporters, the studio obviously sees the Forgotten Realms as the future of this long-running MMO. While the expansion is still a couple of months away, today's Update 18: Disciples of Shadow update will serve as a prologue so that players can get started on their journey through this fresh land. We sat down with DDO's team to talk about Update 18, the new races coming with Shadowfell Conspiracy, and the pre-purchase program that promises to give you head start. Read on, or else the wrath of the owl bear will be upon thee!
Ghostcrawler on Vengeance and patch 5.4
Yes, patch 5.3 isn't even out yet, and we're already looking towards patch 5.4. Thanks to Ghostcrawler, we have this to think about for the future, namely that Vengeance is getting capped at a significantly lower threshold in raids in the future. If you remember back at August of last year, Vengeance saw some significant changes that increased how fast it could ramp up in raids and also gave it a far larger maximum potential. It's been adjusted over time, but in general what GC said back last August has held true -- tank DPS in raiding really did go up. To the point where on some pulls it's not unusual to see tanks leading the DPS, sometimes by extremely large numbers. Since this is a big change that will drastically lower tank damage output (25-man tanks with their 600,000 or more health buffed will lose roughly 300,000 AP on fights where Vengeance was capping at 100% of their health) I'm not surprise it won't be coming in 5.3 -- I am a little surprised it's happening at all, because we all knew Vengeance and tank damage would do exactly what it has done when it was changed. Still, I wait to observe if it has much practical difference since aside from AoE tanking where a multitude of hits can roll in a short window of time (that 20 second ramp up period) and the tanks can make effective use of all that AP I'm not sure it will matter. 5-mans and scenarios were not mentioned, so for now I'm assuming this is only for the raids mentioned.
Limited edition Mass Effect 3 Paladin pistol replica available for pre-order
BioWare has just revealed this snazzy real-life replica version of Mass Effect 3's M-77 Paladin pistol, available for pre-order today. The weapon weighs 7 pounds, is hand-finished and hand-painted, and is one of a set of only 200 made by collectible firm Triforce. Buying one for yourself will run you a total of $400: You'll need to put down $200 now to reserve your own fake space gun, and then another $200 when it's ready to go, which is expected to be later this year. That's not cheap, but then again nobody said fighting off the Reaper Invasion would be.
Level 80 paladin solos some Mogu'shan Vaults bosses, gets Vengeance hotfixed
A great video is making the rounds right now of an exceptional player using some unintended consequences to solo multiple bosses in Mogu'shan Vaults -- and as a protection-specced paladin no less! He apparently downed Stone Guard, Feng, and Elegon before Blizzard caught wind of the escapade. You can see a video of the Elegon kill above. How he pulled this off was by taking advantage of a series of design choices that Blizzard made, combining them all into a hilarious example of the law of unintended consequences in action. To reach a decent item level, the paladin equipped various bind on equip rares that drop in Mists zones which all had a required character level of only 80. And because he was only level 80, he was avoiding the combat ratings drop-offs for levels 81 and 86 that a normal character wearing those pieces would be subjected too. This would allow him to get an insane amount of secondary stats like haste (I've seen that he had 95%!) and mastery (88%, apparently).
Pocket Legends adds Paladin and Ranger classes
Three's company no longer; Spacetime Studios is adding two new classes to its smash hit Pocket Legends, bringing up the grand total of available characters to five. The new classes to be included in today's update are the Vixen Ranger and the Rhino Paladin. The Ranger looks to be a dual-wielding fighter while the Paladin is geared out as a classic tank. The new classes aren't the only things being added today. The update has a new level 76 red dragon to defeat, additional dungeons, a heroic instance, a 3v3 capture-the-flag map, more options for existing classes' skills, and the game's Winterfest holiday event. [Source: Spacetime Studios press release]
Where does the pressure lie in healing?
I used to be a healer, once upon a time. It was in the days of vanilla, when being a healer consisted largely of staring at 40 bars, pressing Flash Heal, and occasionally mixing it up with a bubble or Heal Rank 4 while swigging potions like they were going out of style. It was a very different time, and healing was by and large much less complex than it is today. My guild didn't use Vent, so I did all the healing rotation calls via macros on my keyboard -- that's how easy healing was. I had time to press macro buttons and pay attention to calling things. But at some point that guild fell apart, as guilds are wont to do on occasion. And since server transfers weren't even a possibility at that point in time, I simply rolled another character on another server, vowing to take a break from any and all raiding. It lasted until paid server transfers were added as a feature, at which point my priest was promptly moved to my new server and I began healing again -- this time, in battlegrounds. I helped a lot of friends by healing them while they tried their hardest to get High Warlord in the original honor grind. So what happened? Well ... healing happened.
The return of the Shockadin!
I think the leveling is too easy now, so I end up leveling my characters in otherwise suboptimal ways. I quested as arcane rather than as frost. I'd not learn flying until I absolutely had to. I'd do only orange quests. I also leveled my paladin as a shockadin all the way to 85. Mists of Pandaria comes along, and I figured, why let the 5 levels to 90 stop me? Guilded paladins had told me I should go retribution, that the pre-MoP shockadin excitement wasn't going to pan out. But then I happened upon the "Not Mad, Just Disappointed" shockadin spec by Catulla of Flavor Text Lore. I've styled my paladin in this flavor of shockadin, and I've been having a blast. I don't have the holydin expertise to comment on whether shockadin really could be viable for Challenge Modes or PvP. However, I highly suggest trying this out if all you want is a little healer-spec mob-killing action. Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.
Massively Exclusive: DK Online Paladin revealed
Magic and meatshields are practically a staple in the fantasy genre. In this way, the upcoming free-to-play MMO DK Online is no different; Aeria Games recently revealed its take on these roles with the Sorceress and the Warrior classes. Today, the company introduces a righteous avenger to the mix, the Paladin. Massively brings you an exclusive look at this new class with a dev blog, an interview, and a trailer showing off some of the holy fighter's moves.
Paladin glyph changes in patch 5.0.4
When the new 5.0 patch flips over on Aug. 28, will you be ready with glyphs? Blizzard is recycling old glyphs instead of making new spell IDs and charring old ones. Some glyphs are staying the same, some are new, but some share IDs with old Cataclysm glyphs. Below is our list of new or changing glyphs for paladins. This is not a list of changing tooltips, just which glyphs you ought to have if you want to automatically have the new glyphs when the patch flips over. Paladins have a handful of new glyphs. The rest of the paladin switcheroos are either renamed glyphs or entirely new glyphs. Totally new paladin glyphs: Glyph of the Battle Healer Glyph of Bladed Judgment Glyph of the Falling Avenger Glyph of Focused Wrath Glyph of Mass Exorcism Glyph of Righteous Retreat Glyphs that are changing into new majors: Shield of the Righteous becomes the Alabaster Shield Crusader Strike becomes Avenging Wrath Seal of Insight becomes Blessed Life Exorcism becomes Blinding Light Holy Wrath becomes Denounce Templar's Verdict becomes Divine Storm Judgement becomes Double Jeopardy Cleansing becomes Final Wrath Lay on Hands becomes Flash of Light the Ascetic Crusader becomes Harsh Words Hammer of Justice becomes Holy Wrath Divine Favor becomes Illumination Seal of Truth becomes Immediate Truth Salvation becomes Inquisition the Long Word becomes Protector of the Innocent Hammer of Wrath becomes Templar's Verdict Glyphs that are changing into new minors: Blessing of Kings becomes Contemplation Justice becomes Fire From the Heavens Righteousness becomes the Luminous Charger Blessing of Might becomes the Mounted King Truth becomes Seal of Blood Insight becomes Winged Vengeance It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Allods Online previews patch 3.0.4, spills new server details
Allods Online is constantly on the move, and as such, the team recently announced that the next update will be coming soon to the game. In addition to a brand-new North American server, patch 3.0.4 will witness significant changes to the mentoring and questing systems. Mentoring came with the previous update and is still being fine-tuned. With 3.0.4, mentors will be limited to 10 apprentices per character. Apprentices can be dismissed if a player is over the 10 limit and wants to add a new one. The dev team also announced a mentor/apprentice quest line that will give rewards to both. These quests can be accessed starting at level 10 and completed once per five levels beyond that. Patch 3.0.4 will also include more improvements to questing. The quest tracker and find quest feature are slated to become more intuitive, and the automove ability has been expanded to allow the system to run players through multiple zones in one go. The devs examined the quest flow as well and adjusted it to make it smoother in certain areas. The new server announced yesterday will be called Avilon and was created in response to a larger-than-expected influx of players onto the single North American shard. Players will not be able to transfer existing characters to Avilon, as the devs want to keep the server fresh and fair for those who roll there.
Allods Online announces patch 3.0.4, new North American server
Allods Online players are probably still busy playing with their new toys from the recent patches, such as the new Dead City raid and the Bard class, but gPotato has plenty more tricks up its sleeve. In a new post on the game's official site, the studio has announced Allods' next major update, patch 3.0.4. Information on the new update is scarce at the moment, but the post promises that "previews... of some of the new content and mechanics [players will] be able to experience in the new update" will be cropping up over the next few weeks on the official site. A few of these features include "changes to the mentor system and autorun, the Psionicist and Paladin reworks, new Allods to explore... and more." But that's not all that this new update is bringing with it. North American players are in for an extra treat in the form of a brand-new server. That's right, in addition to all the fancy new features that 3.0.4 is bringing to the game, NA players will be able to start on a fresh, clean server. This is somewhat odd, considering that the game recently merged two of its servers into one. The studio claims that it will "go into more details about the server and what to expect in the first preview which will arrive tomorrow." While you wait on more juicy information, though, just head on over to the Allods official site to give the full post a read.
What classes should WoW have been designed with?
One of the interesting things about converting a real-time strategy game series into a MMO is how the units of the game are converted to playable classes -- or aren't converted, in some cases. While some heroes or units are folded into the classes like Far Seers into shaman and others make it straight into the game like paladins or death knights, others will make it in more as components or abilities sometimes not even given to the thematically suitable class. Such was the case when mages gained the signature Mirror Image from the blademaster hero class instead of warriors, who would seem to be the most appropriate match. Reading over this post on Scrolls of Lore about the Demon Hunter got me wondering again about these elements' making it into the game. Several posters mentioned that quite a few demon hunter-themed abilities have made their way into the warlock toolkit, making a separate demon hunter class redundant and unlikely. It's a fair point, and it's mirrored in other places. Mages in WoW make a specific archmage class unlikely. Paladins have pretty much absorbed the knight unit into themselves. Warriors are getting abilities reminiscent of the Mountain King and Tauren Chieftain heroes. At this point in the game's existence, with 11 classes come Mists of Pandaria, are we likely to see any more introduced? Is it better that the trappings of the RTS make it into the MMO at all, or do they have to come packaged with the heroes and units that made us love them?
Raid Rx: Recap of recent healing changes
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. There's been some large changes to healing for some of the classes in recent builds. This week, we'll recap and go through the classes to see what's new. You might be interested to know that at level 89, my priest has 250k mana. Who wants to wager that 300k mana is the maximum cap at level 90? Remember with the new intellect and mana system coming in with the expansion, intellect stats no longer raise the mana pool anymore. Your mana regeneration is governed strictly by your spirit levels. Priest Lightwell receives a few tweaks to the healing numbers. More importantly, it now has a glyph that completely changes the functionality of the spell. Glyph of Lightspring turns Lightwell into an automatic healing ability with a catch. Lightwell will only heal players with health lower than 50%. It will only perform the check once every 5 seconds. That is a fair compromise to me. I've never been truly satisfied with Lightwell since my experience has shown me that most players never click on it when it really matters. At least this glyph helps remove control from them and I gain the knowledge of my Lightwell kicking in when it'll be needed.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Paladins get Ashbringer with new talent
Paladins, Ashbringer is yours -- well, for a short duration, at least. The level 75 paladin talent Holy Avenger, which is a cooldown that allows the player to gain 3 holy power when using an ability that generates holy power, now turns the paladin's weapon into the mighty Ashbringer for the duration of the spell. Paladins have been asking for iconic imagery in their sets and weapons for some time, with many paladins feeling left out or in an odd place when tier sets are designed around aspects of paladins in the game rather than the Alliance paladins of the traditional days. Ashbringer is about as traditionally paladin as you get. Paladins, congratulations on your badass graphics for Holy Avenger, especially with something so iconic as Ashbringer being part of your kit, so to speak. How cool is that? Blizzard has already given shaman the ability to transform into powerful ascendants, and now we see this cool new flavor for the paladin and brand new demons for the warlock. What will surprise us come next beta patch? It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
Raid Rx: The outlook for holy paladins in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. You know, after reading through and playing around with a holy paladin on the Mists of Pandaria beta, it looks like paladins didn't get a ton groundbreaking class changes. In a way, though, that's a good thing! You still get to keep the same style of play, except you have a few new spells and abilities to really augment your healing even further. You don't even have to learn any new playstyles. If you're an awesome healer now, then you should have no problems moving into the next expansion at all. The additional AoE helpers are a bonus. Even though Holy Radiance is awesome, it'd be nice to have a few other AoE healing spells for a change.
GuildOx player analysis highlights the warlock decline
The folks at GuildOx have gone through their database and done some simple filtering that reveals some fascinating things about who is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. GuildOx started with level 85 characters, filtered for characters with ilevel 400 gear, and then filtered out anyone with PvP gear. What you see in the chart above is the result of that work -- a representative sample of who out of the over 13 million level 85 characters in the GuildOx database is raiding heroic Dragon Soul. If you remember the post about the complexity of systems and player retention that I made a couple of weeks back, you'll remember that I mentioned Cynwise's excellent posts about the warlock decline. Well, here it is again reflected in GuildOx's data. Warlocks are the least played class in heroic raiding. Warriors aren't doing much better, really. Most other classes seem fairly healthy, with classes that have healing specs doing fairly well and rogues absolutely ruling heroic raiding despite being one of the least-played classes in the game overall. It gets even more interesting once we get to look at the GuildOx spec-by-spec breakdown.
Complexity of systems and player retention
If you don't read Cynwise's Warcraft Journal, you probably should. Cyn's been doing an excellent series of posts about warlocks in Cataclysm that are interesting and thought-provoking -- even if, like me, you're not a warlock and don't really know much about the class. For me, one of the most striking tidbits was that rogues are the second-to-least-played class overall, but the second-most-played class in high-end PvP, implying that people only play rogues to PvP. There's a lot of interesting data in there about class representation, role representation, and who is playing what and at what levels. The post that really grabbed my attention was this one about warlock complexity in Cataclysm because it highlights an extreme form of something we've talked about before, the design philosophy that argues for increased complexity in a character's suite of abilities. In its simplest form, it can be summed up as the hitting buttons is fun argument, although at the extreme Cyn describes for warlocks, it becomes a game of if X, then Y that resembles programming your first computer in Basic. If you remember making a chain of dirty words scroll on a loop up the screen, congratulations on being old with me. Cyn's comparison of the destruction rotation in Wrath and Cataclysm shows a rotation with seven elements mushroom out to one with 14 elements to remember and consider. That if X, then Y flowchart just got as complex as a subway map. In my experience, all DPS rotations in general have a little bit of this kind of gameplay nowadays. The difficulty is in hitting the sweet spot where the rotation is designed so that random elements or procs serve to liven up an otherwise predictable set of abilities (providing the fun in the hitting buttons scenario) without making a rotation so complex you need six to seven addons to help you plot it out.
Reader UI of the Week: Puddinpop adds on with a larger screen
Each week, WoW Insider and Mathew McCurley bring you a fresh look at reader-submitted UIs as well as Addon Spotlight, which spotlights the latest user interface addons. Have a screenshot of your own UI that you'd like to submit? Send your screenshots along with info on what mods you're using to readerui@wowinsider.com, and follow Mathew on Twitter. Adding to UI compilations is a fine art we talk about on occasion here at Reader UI of the Week. Some things are easy to fit into a preexisting setup, whereas others are much more difficult, unable to fit in a premade UI's rigorous framework. Puddinpop, a blood elf paladin from the Saurfang server, has submitted a UI that features many additions to a basic RealUI setup smashed together with some of the design elements of LUI. On top of the challenge of expanding on work already existing on the screen, Puddinpop takes the challege a step forward with a gigantic monitor. Sometimes it is just as difficult to design a UI around a much larger monitor as it is with a laptop or smaller screen. Many of the same concerns are present, just in a slightly different way. Fonts may be too small versus too large, UI elements might just never be noticed, and you could actually be straining your eyes to read too-small text. Big monitors can be a burden.
Raid Rx: Mists of Pandaria healing changes
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests. Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast. You'll notice that there are a ton of new glyphs that have been added for all the classes. That list is by no means exhaustive. I also noticed some slight changes in the way certain spells work. I can assure you it won't be anything too drastic, but these changes are enough to keep you interested and wondering. This week, I'll be rounding up what we know healers will be getting, as well as any other notable modifications. New for druids Cenarion Ward appears to be a Prayer of Mending-like spell without the subsequent charges. Good spell to open with before an engagement. Won't have to pre-HoT as much. Just remember to pre-Ward. Wild Mushroom: Bloom! Hope you love 'shrooms, since you'll be gaining the use of these in addition to your Balance friends. Anticipate a moment where big AoE healing is needed, and plant 'shrooms. Detonate after raid group takes a hit, and relish in the healing spores that explode. Regrowth can be glyphed to remove the HoT component. Benefit? 40% increased chance of a critical heal. I guess you can configure a HoT-based class to switch to a non-HoT direction.
The Light and How to Swing It: Evaluating Mists of Pandaria talents for holy paladins
Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome. Speculating on talent choices that aren't even being publicly tested yet is risky business. Mists of Pandaria isn't in beta testing yet, which means that everything is still be up in the air. What if holy power gets scrapped between now and then? What if the developers decide that shockadins should actually be viable? There are simply too many unknowns when discussing an upcoming game that hasn't faced any public scrutiny. At the same time, speculating on talent choices with no empirical evidence whatsoever is also fun, because we get to make it up as we go along. I am already imaging a build with the new Pursuit of Justice, where I stack up 5 holy power points via Boundless Conviction and run around with 60% bonus speed for an entire encounter. Will it work with 5 holy power points, or will the speed boost only count 3 of them? Only time will tell. Or Ghostcrawler. But mostly time.
