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Cataclysm Daily

Daily Thoughts: I’m a Little Scared of Tanking

March 7, 2011

I have a confession to make: Tanking heroics or raids freaks me out a little. First, a little background on me. I’m a WotLK baby mostly. Although I started in TBC, I didn’t hit max level until it was 80 and didn’t do any tanking past level 45 or so. After that point my only max level toon was my Holy/Ret paladin. I’d say it took me halfway through the expansion to get my DK to level 80. The DK was blood-spec DPS (remember back when blood was DPS?). It didn’t take me too long to make the second spec – frost tanking. This spec was aimed at running heroics with its impressive AOE capabilities. Even still, it probably took me until I was geared enough to be ready to raid before I actually queued as tank for a heroic. And I got… Halls of Reflection. Actually, every new tank I got to level 80 hit halls of reflection first…and my shaman when I switched to resto. That place just loved me. I hated it though. I’m a little surprised I don’t somehow get it in cataclysm at 85.

Tanking on a frost DK in Wrath was… very easy. Surprisingly the instance went relatively smoothly that time. Frost-specs massive threat and EZ-mode area of effect damage (I’m looking at you Howling Blast) made picking up adds and holding aggro on bosses a piece of cake. When my druid hit level 80 I’d already done some regs as tank but he was mostly geared for boomkin. Again I waited until I had over 5k gearscore and 30k HP before queuing as tank. Basically identical to my experience as a frost DK. Halls of Reflection > Awesome AOE(swipe spam) > decent single target threat. I did miss having death grip to reel in those stray caster adds but it was easy enough to keep the rest of the mobs under control that the occasional ranged didn’t kill us. Finally, my warrior reached 85 and became over geared for heroics and I queued… it was sloppy. Bringing in packs of mobs (yes in Halls of Reflection, yet again) was a bit more difficult than as a frost DK or bear druid. Most of the time I was scrambling to hold aggro and keep everyone alive. I think I’m a bad warrior tank, but who knows.

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4.0.3a Cataclysm Daily Paladin

Daily Thoughts: The Cataclysm Paladin

December 20, 2010

I’ve spent a lot of posts recently talking about zones (and yes I’m still going to do that Twilight Highlands review at some point), factions, and other such things and not much time on the actual playing my class. The big changes specifically to Paladins in cataclysm (if you don’t count Holy Power from 4.0.3) are the new spells:

Inquisition is our new self buff. It increases all holy damage by 30%. Retribution gets a talent that extends the duration of this buff to 10 seconds per Holy Power used to trigger it. This is meant to be kept up as much as possible similar to Slice and Dice for combat rogues and is a pretty significant DPS loss if not used.. Holy Radiance is pretty much making us a moving healing stream totem, and does an AOE heal to nearby targets. I haven’t got much play testing with this spell, as I’m running ret main now, but I really haven’t heard anything too exciting about from those doing Holy main spec. Finally, Guardian of Ancient Kings is amazing. This buff has a long (5m) cooldown, but skyrockets a ret paladins DPS when used. From what I hear from the other specs, it seems it’s a better friend to ret than the other uses. Each spec gets a specific purpose, one for taking, extra heals for holy and more damage for ret. Follow me after the break for some more…

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Warrior

Daily Thoughts: Fury Warrior In RS & ICC

November 21, 2010

I have to open with this: By the time I finish writing this post, I should have Wrathful Gladiator’s Decapitator . This will not be acquired through any particular PVP skill on the warrior, but through grinding of BG’s, WG, and random heroics. It costs 2550 honor and is the best a warrior can get outside of drops from ICC. Even with resilience wasting a stat for a PVE player, the damage on the weapon and pure attack power (324 AP) is nothing to scoff at. Keep in mind this is the item level 264 version and the 277 version is still only obtainable with rating. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on that last bit, but I don’t have enough honor points on any toon to attempt to buy the 277 version now.

It’s good to be able to say that Fury Warriors can still do great competitive DPS even with the rage normalization and loss of ArP.

Ruby Sanctum: Halion

Halion is not a friendly fight for a Warriors meters, especially when asked to switch to the physical realm and the twilight realm during the last phase. Fortunately, it is otherwise a pretty easy fight for melee dps. In the first phase, and if you are topside during the third phase, it is a standard dragon tank-n-spank with some fire to not stand in. In the second phase, and if you are in the twilight realm during the third phase, it’s also a standard dragon fight with purple fire to not stand in. Melee gets it easy inside the twilight phase because when the orbs connect their frickin’ laser beam, we can keep dpsing at basically full strength as we move to the side to not be cleft in twain. Also, the trash can be a little bit fun leading up to Halion.

ICC: Hardmodes:

Fury DPS in ICC is pretty much just bloody buckets of fun. With 10k dps on Marrowgar and 12k on Saurfang, I’m able to do very satisfying damage. Keep in mind, I’m not decked out in 25m gear on my warrior. As of this raid he was only using a 251/219 weapon set. Without a ranged slow or easy stun, Fury doesn’t really end up having a “job” during any of the fights in ICC. Interrupt Deathwhisper, deal with the correct adds on Putri, Valinthria, and LK (all same as any dps class really) and do mindless, raging dps. It’s a nice change coming from heals as a main spec. For me, doing dps in a raid is a lot more relaxing than heals for most content. Admittedly, with how ez-mode much of WotLK content is, healing can end up requiring less attention than dps. As for all the hardmodes that we’ve attempted so far, only Putricide has proven difficult. I think we had 4 wipes on him during our first round of attempts. Outside of him, we’ve cleared all bosses in HM except Princes, Sindra, and the big LK. Princes shouldn’t be too much trouble when we get around to them, but so far we haven’t done any attempts.

Today is a good day to be fury, though the future does hold a great many uncertainties. Can we hold back cleave spam on trash in order to not break CC and get our faces smashed in cata instances? Will blizzard nerf us into the ground while they laugh on the yachts? Is that guy named justinbieberz in trade chat really Justin Bieber? The last one easily scares me the most. Only time will tell. For now, keep careless smashing your face into things Fury Warriors, it’s why GC gave you big pointy helmets.

Daily

Daily Thoughts: Why I Rolled a Paladin

November 4, 2010

I was going to write a little about healing on the new resto shaman, but I didn’t really play the resto shaman any today. Well, I did one wintergrasp, but it doesn’t really count towards getting a grasp on my class and spec. I have a different topic in mind, inspired by a post made by a guild member that you can find the link Corath’s Blog – Melee State of Mind. I started to wonder, since it’s been a few years now, why a Paladin?

My very first Warcraft toon was actually a warrior, who since has become my 6th and most recent level 80. I played him to about level 26 back in the middle of Burning Crusade and quickly lost interest. Despite the heavy armor, I took a lot of damage and had to stop and eat often or waste gold on potions. I don’t much like stopping or wasting gold so I moved on to a class that felt like everything my warrior was – with heals. I tend to play plate-wearing burly monstrosities of power when I can in a game. Now I had a character that could not only wield a great 2 handed weapon, he wore heavy armor, hit really hard, and could keep himself alive. Perfect. This Paladin became my first max level character shortly after Wrath launched. I played him almost exclusively for a nearly a year, dabbling only occasionally in alts.

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Weekend Update

Weekend Update: Lake Tahoe

October 24, 2010

Take a moment and notice the subject. There isn’t a Lake Tahoe in Warcraft to my knowledge. There is, on the other hand, one on the border of California and Nevada. “Why,” you might be wondering, “is the subject about something not in WoW on a WoW blog?” The answer is simple: Because I felt like it. A more specific answer is that I was in Tahoe all weekend and didn’t really get much WoW in, playing, AH, blogging or otherwise. Thus, not much new WoW to update about.

After getting back this afternoon I’ve worked on gearing up my warrior. I got him his ilvl 264 back piece from Justice Points and his wrathful boots for Honor points. I’m not really doing PVP on him but 264 boots of any physical dps type is much better than the blue he was wearing. And I must say, I’m really, really tired of these WotLK Heroics. I absolutely cannot wait until we get new ones in Cataclysm.

Should have a real post up tomorrow. Probably some more about the Warrior.

Top Five

Top Lists: 5 Best New Paladin Talents of 4.0.1

October 21, 2010

With Top Lists, I bring you the classic past-time of listing the best/worst of any subject. On this blog, naturally, Warcraft themed topics will be the focus.

Today: Best New Paladin Talents of 4.0.1.

5. Rebuke – Ret – Finally we have a legitimate interrupt. Of course, this will lead to ret paladins actually having a job on boss fights besides facerolldps.

4. Divine Guardian – Prot – Raid wall that doesn’t require another cool down to use. Being able to hit a button to help protect 20% of raid damage for 6 seconds is a big deal on any high raid damage fights.

3. Long Arm of the Law / Improved Judgement – Ret (IJ in range of Holy/Prot) – Wait! Paladins got an interrupt and a gap closer? Both things most of us didn’t think we’d see in this expansion. Improved judgement gives us an additional 20 yards of range on our judgement giving us a ranged attack that doesn’t have a cast time. The long arm talent improves judgements even further by increasing our run speed by 45% for 6 seconds if the target is more than 15 yards away. This is useful when chasing down another player, to keep downtime minimal on trash (especially if your tank has a charge ability), and on raid bosses that might be high movement periods that require you to be more than 15 yards from your target (Professor Putri and his slimes for example).

2. Sanctified Wrath – Ret – This talent reduces the cool down of Avenging Wrath (wings) by 20/40/60 seconds, increases the crit chance of Hammer of Wrath by 20/40/60%, and the new most important function – HoW can be used during AW regardless of the health of the enemy. This is great to open up on a boss (watch tank threat) in order to get 2, possibly 3, periods of HoW during a fight for a huge dps increase. Right now, it’s a little bit over powered in PVP as hammer can easily hit a target without amazing resilience for 15-18k and two-shot them. It does make up for our weaker judgements in PVP.

1. Protector of the Innocent – Holy (in range of ret/prot) -This first tier talent from the Holy tree is straight amazing with no downside. It’s a permanent Beacon of Light on yourself. All heals done by the Paladin also heal the Paladin, including self heals. These are healing my Paladin somewhere in the range of 5-9k each. It’s one of the best survivability talents in the game for both PVE raiding and PVP play.

Do you have any thoughts of what should have been on my top 5 list? Comment your own top 5 paladin talent list or suggest a new list topic I could write up!

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