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Wrath Beta patch notes: Paladin part IV - the Protection tree
Alright, we've seen the changes to the Holy tree, and as far as I can tell, it looks really exciting. Blizzard addressed some key issues such as mobility with possible instant heals, HoTs, and spell haste. Holy Paladins might actually use Seals and Judge them. There's still the quibble about mana regeneration, but for now, it looks as though Paladin healing is headed in the right direction. You can read about the changes to Holy here, as well as the list of changes to baseline abilities and talents.What about Paladin tanking? The Protection tree in its current state is designed for AoE tanking, which Blizzard acknowledges to be the Paladin tank's niche. But where Paladin tanks shine with trash mobs and situational bosses, the reactive tanking mechanic is only moderately successful with single targets, particularly bosses with slow attacks or do not rely purely on Physical attacks (thus not activating a block). That said, Paladin tanks can frontload massive threat, scale well against multiple mobs, and are the darlings of 5-man content.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Wrath Beta Edition
Well, we were going to talk about other things, but with the Beta coming out I have to admit I've entirely forgotten what they were. There's really no point in pretending that we're not going to be talk about this, is there? I don't think so myself.We learn nothing about any new talents that don't directly replace older talents. Nothing about Bladestorm or Titan's Grip, and talents like Incite are only mentioned because they're directly replacing talents like Defiance. We also don't learn what the big new protection talent to replace Shield Slam is from these notes. (We do have other sources and we will be discussing those talents in more depth, I'm just pointing out what the notes don't specifically mention.) The notes focus more on protection spec than others although we do find out that mace spec and sword spec are being slightly nerfed while poleaxe spec is getting a nice little buff: these changes seem PvP related to my eyes, but I have no idea how effective they'll actually be. The juggling of talents and the alteration of their effects definitely seems to confirm the notion that crushing blows are a thing of the past. On the one hand, this is a huge change to warrior tanking mechanics, as we're noted for our ability to hit uncrushability while druid tanks simply soak the damage with higher armor and stamina (paladins use the same mechanic as we do for uncrushable, they just need more block rating but can stay uncrushable longer than we can due to how their abilities work vs. ours): we've yet to see how this is going to play out. With the addition of DK's as tanks, removing CB's keeps them from having to rely on a gimmicky high parry (since they won't use a shield to tank) to avoid being crushed, but it also means that warriors will need a means to stay competitive with other tanks. Threat seems to be getting entirely reworked, so for now I'm cautiously optimistic about where tanking is heading for protection spec warriors, and indeed, all warriors. I'll go so far as to say that arms and fury warriors will be tanking in Wrath. I don't expect them to be dedicated main tanks for raids, but I do expect to see them tanking in five mans without respeccing, and that is without taking the possible two talent spec idea into account.
Wrath Beta patch notes: Paladin part II
When Ghostcrawler mentioned on the closed Friends & Family Alpha that Paladins were the last to receive changes because the entire class was being majorly reworked, he wasn't kidding. The patch notes from the recently opened Wrath of the Lich King Beta revealed massive changes to spells and abilities as well as a shuffling of talents among the three trees. I covered an overview of the changes as well as the new Hand nomenclature for old Blessings in the first part of our beta analysis. It's now updated with the new Paladin talents in all three trees, so be sure to check it out.Before we get into the really juicy things, namely the new Wrath Paladin talents, we'll take a look at the changes to baseline spells and current talents. In some cases, these were totally reworked, and in others they were significantly improved. The first spell that leaps out with a huge buff is the change to Avenging Wrath, which no longer causes Forebearance. Its damage increase has been reduced to 20% (down from 30%), and now increases healing done by 20% (up from 0%).
More leaks from the Alpha forums on Shamans, Warriors, and Death Knights
Deathknight.info has just posted another batch of info from the Alpha forums, this time with Wryxian and Slorkuz talking about Shamans, Warriors, and Death Knights. Primarily, they focus on the tanking abilities of Death Knights and Warriors and delve into some possible improvements to the Shaman Enhancement tree in WoTLK, including possible new talents: Shamans Enhancement Shamans, says Wryxian, will probably see further review. It looks like a lot of the new Enhancement talents will see some changes as well: Weapon Specialization (which gives special abilities based on which weapon type the Shaman uses) will likely be removed Improved Shamanistic Rage (which made Shamans using SR immune to all movement impairing effects and stuns at 2 points) will also probably be removed. Wryxian mentioned a possible replacement for Weapon Specialization: Each melee critical hit would give a stacking buff that reduces cast time by 20% and lasts for 15 seconds. That would mean that at 5 stacks, you'd get a free instant cast spell. Feral Spirit, the 51 point enhancement ability that summons ghost wolves to aid the Shaman, may be getting a second look as well. For Enhancement DPS, they hope that totems and shocks make up for the lack of melee abilities to keep it interesting, though they may consider a new melee move for Shamans as well. In addition, he promises new totem changes soon. Read on for some juicy information on Warriors, Death Knights, and Blizzard's vision for tanking in WoTLK.
Hybrid Theory: Gold and the road to Wrath
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.It's a little early to get nervous about not being prepared for the upcoming expansion, but it's never too early to start the preparations. If you start ahead of time, you'll never even need to worry about it coming down to crunchtime. Plus, if you finish getting ready ahead of time, you can take those last few weeks before Wrath nice and easy. Something I noticed a lot as we neared The Burning Crusade, everyone and their mother spent eight hours a day in battlegrounds that final month before the expansion, and by the time we could go through the Dark Portal most of them were burned out on playing WoW.The absolute number one thing we can be sure you'll need in Wrath is gold. It doesn't matter what they do to your gear or your class, gold will be needed. Even if gold won't be worth as much as it is right now, you'll need it. You can be sure of that. Heck, even if you don't need gold for anything at all in Wrath by some miracle, it's cool, don't worry. 10,000g can buy you roughly 6,666,666 bottles of Moonglow when the Lunar Festival comes around. Think about that, man. Moonglow is awesome....Hm, I hope that math is right.
Hybrid Theory: PvP viability
Welcome to Hybrid Theory, where we discuss all things hybrid in the World of Warcraft. Hybrid Theory is brought to you each week by columnist/blogger Alex Ziebart.A pretty substantial point of debate when it comes to Hybrids is their place in PvP. The thought that only one spec is viable per class is most problematic in the context of Hybrids for a couple of different reasons. Some argue against every spec being arena viable, some argue in favor of it.The argument in favor of each spec being viable that I feel is the strongest is the fact that each Hybrid spec is vastly different from all of the others. In the arena, an Enhancement Shaman isn't doing the same thing as an Elemental Shaman. They are doing similar things like dropping totems and casting Shocks, but the role they play is different. Enhancement is in your face, Elemental throws lightning at your face, and Restoration is healing your face. This is not like Rogues in which all three specs are about hitting you until you fall down, just in different ways.Why is it a problem that all three of them aren't viable? It essentially feels like a forced block on your chances at success. "Just spec Resto" isn't really a valid answer, because it means you are not able to play your preferred role. Someone who rolled a Shaman to Stormstrike people's faces off are told to go get some Elemental gear, and that isn't very fun. To be successful in the arena, they are more or less forced out of how they want to play the game.
The Care and Feeding of Warriors: Titan's Grip!
Titan's Grip is confirmed -- dual wielding 2h weapons. Rossi will love that. - Michael Gray from WoW Insider's coverage of the WWI dev panel.To my mind, the news from the Worldwide Invitational is big enough to push back our discussion of DPS gear for the starter raider. (We most certainly will talk more about it, believe me.) Several statements from the invitational need discussion for us warriors, I think, especially worth considering how they may well change the design philosophy of the class.Also, yay, Diablo III. It's especially appropriate that we get the news about Titan's Grip on the same day as we get our spiritual forefathers, the barbarian class, back. So, you may ask, what exactly was said about warriors that was interesting?Warrior Wanted to make the class feel more like Warcraft III -- put the Bladestorm Shockwave in, and tweaked Arms and Protection. Shockwave will help with Prot damage problem Titan's Grip is confirmed -- dual wielding 2h weapons.
Build Shop: Warrior 31/27/3 for Season 4
Every Tuesday, Chris Jahosky contributes Build Shop, which takes a look into one of the many talent specs available to players. This week, Michael Gray guest writes to talk about the perennial Warrior build for the upcoming Season 4. If you're like me, you're looking forward to June 24th with almost breathless anticipation. New season, new ratings, new competition. And like hundreds (thousands?) of others, we have a Warrior sitting patiently at the stables, prepping for the gates to open. He sits there, foaming at the mouth, smiling nervously at his partner Druid or Priest, with Mortal Strike almost literally visible in his pixellated eyes.Build Shop has discussed Warrior hybrid builds previously, but that 28/33 build was focused on actual hybrid play - a mix of PvP and PvE. The classic Arena-based "Mortal Strike Hybrid" starts off with at least 31 points sitting in the Arms tree -- you can't have a "Mortal Strike Hybrid" without Mortal Strike. Mortal Strike is a foundation of the Arena build. While there's leeway earlier in the Arms and Fury trees for this build, the deeper in the trees you get, the more certain talents become "mandatory."After the break, let's talk about the talents and whirligigs that make the Mortal Strike Hybrid so popular and powerful in the Arena.
Combat stats and spellpower consolidated on Alpha
Sources are saying that a new Alpha build showed up on the WoTLK Alpha servers yesterday, featuring a few interesting changes. Kalgan's promised spellpower change we have mentioned, and it now appears to be on the Alpha servers. In addition, it looks like the dev team is working on consolidating even more stats. As of the latest build, all instances of haste rating, hit rating, and critical strike rating on gear will now modify both physical attacks and spells at the same time.
Tank Talk: Do you feel lucky, punk?
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's new raid-tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column will be rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and myself (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. At least, that's what the others said they were doing. I intend to use it mostly as a soapbox to complain. Absolute power tends to......something something.Welcome to Tank Talk. I am your bear Druid hostess for this week, with a topic that occurred to me while reading a recent article here on the site. Eliah Hecht wrote that his guild is facing a not-uncommon tank shortage and that he has considered the possibility of leveling a tanking class to 70 before Wrath, or tanking on a Death Knight afterwards. A number of people on my server and in my guild have talked about doing the same thing, or switching mains once Wrath hits. With so many people playing Death Knights, I think it's very possible that more people will discover they enjoy -- or at least, don't mind -- tanking, and may seek to do so in a raid environment without necessarily knowing what they've really signed up for. From those of us who have tanked raid content in vanilla WoW or BC, here are the 10 questions you'll want to ask yourself if you're considering the possibility of tanking serious raid content:
Blizzard changes the description of the Death Knight talent trees
Curse has noticed a very intriguing change to the Death Knight information page. The descriptions of each of the talent trees has been changed. Here are the old descriptions: Blood: Talents in this tree focus on damage dealing abilities. Blood Presence increases damage output by a percentage. Frost: Talents in this tree focus on tanking abilities. Frost Presence increases threat and lowers damage taken by a percentage. Unholy: Talents in this tree have a variety of functions including summons, diseases, and PvP-focused abilities. Unholy Presence increases attack speed and reduces the global cooldown on death knight abilities. And now, the new descriptions: Blood: Talents in this tree focus on weapons, armor, and strikes. Frost: Talents in this tree focus on control, counters, and combos. Unholy: Talents in this tree focus on spells, summons, and diseases. This is quite a drastic change, but what could it mean? Let's look at the possibilities after the break.
Frost Mages and Frost Death Knights
Over on the forums, Scorp brings up a Death Knight concern that I haven't heard before: as we all have known since last BlizzCon, the Death Knight's three talent trees are "Blood," "Unholy," and "Frost," and the one that Scorp has a problem with is the last one. Should Blizzard change the "Frost" tree on the Death Knight class so people don't confuse it with Mages?If you're asking me: no. "Restoration," "Holy," and "Protection" are all reused in a few different talent trees, and for both of those, while the talents are different, the intent is the same. "Frost," for both Mages and Death Knights, will have the same aim as well, as far as we've been told so far -- both classes will aim for DPS in those trees, with extra consideration given to crowd control and slow debuffs. In fact, depending on exactly how the Death Knight's talents work, the "Frost" title might help newer players understand the tree a little better anyway, especially if they've played with a Frost Mage before.Not that people don't have ideas -- "Ice" (yes, Ice, baby), "Chill" and "Really, really cold stuff" are all names being thrown around on the forums. But Blizzard will probably stick with "Frost" -- no reason to change it up, especially if the abilities line up with the Mage tree as much as we expect them to.
How easily can your account be hacked?
You've probably heard the stories before. A friend's roommate's cousin once got his WoW account hacked. The hacker took all of his character's items and gold, and left a few naked, violated characters to fend for themselves. It conjures the same feelings as coming home to find your house has been broken into, or walking out to the driveway in the morning to find your car is gone.There has been a recent phenomenon of hacked accounts lately, more than ever. WoW had a recent problem with Xfire, and several people got their accounts hacked. The leader of Rebel Rising [rawr], one of the top PvP guilds in Guild Wars just got their account hacked and the hacker disbanded the entire [rawr] alliance and deleted the guild. This is a guild that had worked for years to establish itself in the GW PvP community, including its very own tournament cup named after them. But the fact that it can all go away so easily, as it did from one hacker, makes us aware of the inherent dangers and vulnerabilities we face in this environment.
FakeTV emulates human watching the tube, supposedly discourages thieves
What else can we say? The concept here is pure genius, and it totally makes those pricey security systems seem way pointless (okay, slightly less critical). The FakeTV is a strobe that sets up in an occupied room at night and flashes up beams of light. From the inside, we can imagine it looks fairly curious, but from the outside, it gives prospective burglars the idea that someone is actually awake and watching a television program. It promises to produce the effects of "scene changes, fades, swells, flicks, on-screen motion and color changes," just like they were generated by a bona fide set. We can't speak for how well (or not) this thing actually works, but at just $49, we'd say it's a solid buy if you're the paranoid type.[Via BoingBoing]
Switching specs, switching roles
Now, there's some classes (mostly pure DPS) that have a special advantage when it comes to respeccing: When they decide to change specs, they can mostly get away with using the same set of gear. They may want to regem a bit toward one stat or another, or switch weapons, but for the most part, they can change their spec and settle right into their new role with relative ease, not having to wait for certain gear to come along before they make a "final" plunge. Even if they do need to make a bigger stat change, their old gear can usually mostly suffice until they get a few more drops. I've noticed this because I'm strongly considering switching two of my hybrids to another role full time soon, and it's been a lot more complicated, because gear enters the equation in a much larger way.
The Light and How to Swing It: Seals, Blessings and Auras part II
Last week we took a look at one of the Paladin's core class mechanics, the Seal, which is a short-duration buff that is both preparatory (for Judgement) and integral to a Paladin's attack cycle. Last week, I also mentioned how Seals fail to play a part in a healers spell cycle because of how they operate. Because seals require a Paladin to make a melee attack in order for a seal to work or proc, they are similar to Rogue poisons or Shaman weapon buffs. But seals are not weapon buffs, allowing them to proc off unarmed melee attacks (although why anyone would want to is anyone's guess) but also making them susceptible to dispel mechanics. I personally think there was a wasted opportunity in this design because it locks out one key aspect of the class from an entire spec. Because of the short seal duration, healers must get into melee range and whack at opponents constantly. Even if a Retribution Paladin is in the raid keeping up a Holy Paladin's judged seal, the Holy Paladin himself won't reap the benefits of his own judgement -- most likely Wisdom or Light -- because he won't be hitting the enemy. A healing Paladin's two-button spell cycle consists of Holy Light and Flash of Light which both have cast times, necessitating periods of no movement and often precluding melee combat. If EA Mythic's Warhammer Online follows through with the hype, there won't be any, as animated designer Paul Barnett would call it, "namby pamby healer classes."While Retribution is fun and can dish out some hurt, and while Protection are kings of tanking entire armies, when a Paladin specs Holy, she becomes exactly that -- a namby pamby healer class. The Holy spec is somewhat ironic and goes against the grain of the core class design. Paladins are a heavily-armored melee class. When they spec Holy, that armor often goes to waste and the melee aspect is shelved away. If the spec was built to take advantage of the seal system rather than be hindered by it (putting up seals activate the GCD, pushing back healing or cleansing), we'd have a very different story. We would have Holy Paladins rushing into combat -- I don't care if they deal piddly damage -- in order to be effective, rather than standing in the back of the raid. I attribute that playstyle dichotomy to the failure of seals.
The Light and How to Swing It: Seals, Blessings, and Auras part I
In the Burning Crusade intro cinematic, we see an extremely cool sight with a Draenei Paladin reading from a libram, casting a spell, and walking dramatically away with his Hammer of the Naaru over his shoulder. That spell that he cast was a Seal, one of the core features around which the class is designed. A Seal lasts thirty seconds (which makes you wonder why the Draenei in the video cast it, seeing as how he'll probably need to refresh it once he's out of the building) and can be unleashed through a Judgement for a particular effect. Seals are self-affecting magic effects while Blessings, the other core class mechanic, can be cast on others and often have longer durations. Auras are an area-of-effect buff and the third core class feature that rounds out the Paladin's playing mechanics. Although other classes have persistent area-of-effect buffs such as a Shaman's totems or a Druid's 41-point talents, only Paladins have passive, permanent aura. Understanding and mastering the use of these three core features are key to playing the Paladin class.
Yoggie's Gatekeeper ExpressCard keeps your laptop secure
Yoggie, the company that just loves to take those pesky security duties off of your computer's plate, is offering up yet another Linux-based mini-computer designed specifically to safeguard your laptop (and keep it focused on more important duties). Rather than utilizing USB, however, the Gatekeeper Card Pro slides right into that oft-neglected ExpressCard slot, giving laptop owners 13 security applications and the ability to rest easy. Of course, whether or not this convenience is really worth $199 is another question entirely.[Via PC World / Yahoo]
The Light and How to Swing It: Support class in disguise
I re-specced to Holy again a few weeks back to concentrate on our 5v5 after quite some time of running around whacking things with a hammer. This is one of the best things about being a hybrid class. We have the option to play a particular way. Before I had decided to focus on Retribution for a couple of months, I would re-spec about 4-5 times a week depending on what our raid needed and spec Ret when I wanted to muck around in the Battlegrounds.The trouble is, between Holy and Retribution, there is a world of difference in how to play. Granted, most of your spells will be pretty much the same, but the playing style is completely different. As much as Shockadins will protest, the truth is, Holy is a support spec. It is terrible for questing and the best thing to do is find a partner who can kill things for you. Despite the improvements to Holy Shock and the spell damage included with healing gear, the experience pales in comparison to pure DPS classes or specs. This is fine. The only real beef I have is in the disparity in play experience and the nagging feeling that, at the heart of it all, Paladins are glorified sidekicks.
Vote for the best piece of advice!
Last week I asked you to leave a comment with tips of anti-advice you could give to players. Things like "Be sure to move in the flame wreath so you're not cold when the blizzard hits!" or "Just walk up to Archimonde, he won't agro until you hit him." You all responded in force and gave lots of good tips and pieces of advice. Now for fame and no-fortune, lets vote for the best one!I'll close the voting next weekend and announce the winner on Monday April 21st. Vote now! I did! %Poll-12641%
