When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Final

I have actually rolled over into live by this point, so really I am wrapping up my feelings on the game as I continue to level.

WAR really captures the essence of PvP and has succeeded in making it fun, meaningful, and rewarding. And fun. They went even further and found ways to eliminate or minimize the unfun elements. For example, ganking.

Ganking as we know it from WoW does not exist in WAR. There are no pure stealth classes who can pop out of nowhere and eliminate you in 1-2 hits. It almost impossible to fight someone who is far below your level thanks to the chicken mechanic. It is even viable to pick a fight if you run across someone a level or two higher than you. Combat is slow enough that you have time to make some choices. Even healing classes have a damage component to allow them to save themselves, and pure healing classes like the dwarven rune priest are almost indestructible on 1 on 1 combat.

Questing is tied in nicely into the PK aspect of the game. You can get repeatable quests to kill a certain number of enemy players, play a certain scenario (Battleground), or even visit a specific objective inside of an RvR zone (where you are automatically flagged for combat). When you are in the RvR zone, you are automatically buffed to have base stats equivalent to a level x8, which gives you at least a fighting chance against another level. Sure, you can still run across multiple adversaries, but you're pretty much screwed whenever that happens, anyway. Even more importantly, 2 lower level guys stand in very good chances (at least 3:2) of beating a higher level opponent of equal skill. Unless that opponent is a Warrior Priest, because those guys are friggin' OP.

Dead players drop XP, cash, and the occasional random green. Taking control of a keep opens up key vendors in the zone.

If you can find a good group of friends to play with, then WAR is fun. A huge difference is that the solo experience to max level seems hardly worth the trip.

So in summary, WAR has enough fun, and enough depth, to keep me coming back for many more nights to come. I hope to see you all there.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 2

PvP Synergies

Last night we had our first 500-0 scenario victory, and it was really incredible. We had the ideal situation of a well-balanced group against a fairly disorganized opposition. We weren't a full 15 person warband, but there were enough of us on vent that it made a difference, and we held all 3 objectives with zero deaths. The synergies between tanks and healers, in particular, is amazing. Healers can be very durable in 1-on-1 or 2-on-1, and if you have a tank guarding the healer you can really do some amazing things.

For example, in another scenario, Nordenwatch, one of the objectives is to control a flag by the fortress. It works on proximity, like the flags in Eye of the Storm. We had pushed to the next objective but were repulsed, and the only people alive were Snotspigot the goblin shaman (healer/DPS hybrid, ably played by the dwarf formerly known as Daigan) and myself (Chosen, tank class). We managed to stay alive for what felt like forever, but was probably only about a minute and a half, against 5 on 2 odds until our reinforcements rezzed and made it back into the fight. Between taking 50% of his damage, boosting his avoidance and mine with Hold the Line, and snaring all of the melee on Snotspigot (tab, Dizzying Blow)^3, he was able to kite and HoT and keep us both alive. Because we were defending an objective we controlled and were still alive, we kept control. After the fight we were amazed that we had survived, and I think that is going to be one of my definitive Warhammer memories.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 1

The quests are really well done, at least for the starting areas (only level 6 or so on a couple of characters, and I am not trying to go too far just because I'm going to have to redo it at launch). One nice thing is that if you have to kill something for a drop it's a 100% drop rate. Quest hubs are obvious, and there are highlighted areas on the mini-map that indicate what regions you need to look in to see stuff. The starting zones seem a little more compact, as well, so I feel like there is less time spent running through empty space. You might have heard about the Public Quest feature, which is really great, as well.

The way a PQ works is you wander into a zone and a little alert pops up on your screen indicating that there is a public quest going on and you have the option of participating. When the quest is over, you get a standing based on how much you contributed to the completion, whether it's damage or healing done. The server then does a roll /1000, and you get a bonus based on your preliminary standing (my best finish was 4th, and I got +200 or something). Your final score determines if you're eligible for loot, and there are loot bags down to 9 or 10, with better quality rewards the better you finish. Another nice thing is that the loot bags contain a bunch of different stuff, and you get to pick one- so if you get a piece of armor that's not an upgrade, you can always take cash or a pot. The PQs restart every 2 minutes, so you can do them as often as you like.

The graphics and spell effects are more indicative of a newer game; but the downside is that you might want more beefy hardware to play. The races and careers (classes) are all very flavorful and pretty true to the Warhammer IP. For example, the Dark Elves are the merciless, haughty, backstabbing branch of the elf family. They were banished from the main High Elf homeland, but have come back to lay siege. The 3rd quest hub is right on the front lines of what looks like a successful siege, and the Dark Elves are mostly just mopping up some resistance. One of your quests is to go open up a cage where the NPCs keep their giant lizard mounts so they can go and eat some of the defenders. So you open the cage, the lizard plods over and eats a very whiny High Elf, and all of the NPCs laugh.

You could conceivably PvE your way through the game, at least to the end, but PvP is actually very well executed. Most standard servers are not open RvR- you have to be in a contested area to be automatically flagged. Starting at level 1, you can queue for a scenario, which is a lot like a battleground. When you join the scenario you are given the stats of a level 8, but no abilities. However because you can get experience in scenarios you could level doing nothing but that (although it would be slower than questing). I actually did that when I first got started, and it was entertaining. Then you can take a break, level and train some more, and then queue up for a scenario. You can queue from anywhere, so you can go quest, pop into a scenario, and then it drops you right back to where you were so you can finish questing. You also earn Renown, which is more like PvP experience more than honor, so you are leveling up on 2 fronts. As you gain renown you can buy renown gear, but is usable for questing and so forth.

Another big difference is that there is no mana or rage, everything uses action points (AP). The closest analogy is the Rogue energy bar; it continually refreshes and is drained by doing stuff. Health and AP regenerate quickly when you're out of combat, so there is no sitting and drinking (which is disconcerting for about 5 minutes, and then you're sold).

PvP is balanced around 4 archetypes: Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged (or caster) DPS, and healers.

Tanks are effectively PvP crowd control. As you level up you get a bunch of snares and knock backs. Plus, the game has limited collision (3 seconds and then someone can push through you), so you can literally be a meat shield. You also get a PvP taunt (which debuffs an opposing player until they attack you), as well a a guard ability that lets you eat some damage taken by a buddy. Sword and Board is very strong, because you can block ranged attacks and spells. If you queue for a scenario at level 1, that's going to be your biggest contribution is just trying to get in front of squishier people and take some of the heat.

Melee DPS tend to be squishier but can absolutely shred people under the right circumstances. I haven't tried a straight mDPS class yet, but I can tell you that I had a caster get repeatedly shredded by one. :-)

Healers have some interesting implementations. There really aren't a lot of what we would recognize as pure healers. The Dark Elves have a melee healer who heals by doing DPS, the Orks have a shaman that builds up healing power by doing damage, and builds up damage by doing healing, and the Chaos (humans) have another melee Healer. Healers in general seem to be extremely durable, even against a pure DPS class, and well-played melee healers (especially when guarded by a tank) are really, really tough to deal with.

Ranged DPS comes in some interesting varieties. The Orks have a hunter-type class called a Squig Herder that summons these little mouths with legs. They were recently buffed and people are calling this the new cheese class. I tried one for a bit and while levelling my squig had at one time 6 mobs on him and shrugged it off while I plinked them down. The Chaos folks have a guy who floats on a permanent disc called the Magus. He drops demons in a little summoning circle who function a lot like stationary gun turrents. It's a neat kind of mechanic as it gives you some versatility for offense or defense. The Dark Elves have a Sorceress who has a combo-point spell system. As you cast spells you build up dark energy, which increases the chance that you'll take some backlash damage, but also allows you to nuke someone when you have the points built up. This is probably the closest to a pure mage class. And the Ork's caster DPS is also their healer, the Shaman.

The cons: the solo experience is probably not going to be as viable as it is in WoW. While there is nothing that prevents you from soloing quests and scenarios, the game strongly encourages you to guild. With the PvP focus communication and teamwork are even more important, and you're not going to get that from a PUG. The only other question mark I have is what is the end game going to feel like. The pinnacle of the WAR experience is supposed to be capital city sieges. I have no idea how well this is going to work. It was well tested, and people who played it said it was extremely fun, but it's supposed to be a major accomplishment, so it happens infrequently. Level cap is a long way off, but it's something to definitely think about.

The other thing I don't like is that you get a lot of the same annoyances from WoW BGs in these scenarios. These all tend to be a consequence of the people involved, unfortunately, which is all the more reason to guild up. PUGs in scenarios tend to get absolutely demolished, so even if you're under levelled you can still be a lot more successful if you're organized. In this way I think the game actually succeeds more than WoW because the rewards for teamwork and skillful play are more evident.

Right now I'm rolling with the Axis guild (Destruction) on Tyrion server (www.axis-guild.com), which for former Watchmen has Petunia as the GM, with Daigan, Pzar, and Trian also playing. I will definitely play the game at least through November, at which point I will have to decide if Lich King is going to pull me back. I actually enjoy PvE raiding, so I'm going to have to see if organized RvR is going to be enjoyable enough to keep me coming back.

Overall the game is pretty well polished, and remarkably stable. Not WoW levels of stability yet, so there are some occasional crashes to desktop, but overall it's quite playable. I imagine you would want a reasonably new computer to really enjoy the game, as 5 FPS is probably fatal in RvR, but I would ask around in that case. It feels similar enough to WoW that you can comfortably jump in and start doing stuff without reading any documentation, and a lot of the conventions are the same. The atmosphere and storyline/quest execution is all top notch, and the PvP has some noticeable improvements. It feels like a solid addition to the MMO field, but it's not going to kill WoW by any stretch.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Vista's UAC and World of Warcraft

I recently bought a toy computer to play games on, and it happened to come with Vista Super Premium Mocha Lattechino. I've got a techie background so I figured I would give it a go.

My first major decision was that I was going to try to live life as just a normal, unprivileged user. So after setting up the admin account, I made a nice ordinary user account for me. I then tried installing Ventrilo and was pleasantly surprised when it started asking me for password prompts. Welcome to something approaching multi-layer security!

Long story short, I install WoW and Wowmatrix (my addon manager of choice) and go to town. I launch the game from Wowmatrix, everything seems fine. I quit to uninstall some addons, and when I relaunch WoW none of my addons load. Yowza.

So I try to open an addon folder, and the first thing that happens is that UAC kicks in and asks me for my password. Hrm. So by now I am getting the picture that WoW runs in an unprivileged state (which is normal), but then it subsequently does not have the privs necessary to read the addons, which were installed by an admin-privileged instance of Wowmatrix.

All of my folders were set to read-only, and I would try to unset them and it would not stick--UAC kept reverting them. After a fair amount of cursing and some research, I determined that I essentially had 3 options:

  1. Disable UAC entirely
  2. Make my user account an admin account
  3. Grant WoW (and ancilliary programs) the ability to execute as admin
I wanted to avoid 1&2 at all costs-- I come from a *nix background and a dead easy way to prevent a lot of bad stuff from happening is to restrict what can run in the first place. Option 3 does introduce some risk, but it's less risk overall than either 1 or 2. There is still the potential for the WoW executable to do Very Bad Things to my hard drive, but at least in that case I know who to yell at.

After switching to the admin account while keeping my account open (another feature I'm glad they copied shamelessly from Apple, who copied it shamelessly from the Unix world), I found Wow.exe and went to properties > security tab > advanced > and checked the "run as admin for all users" box. Switching back and I confirmed that, voila, all of my addons were working.

I do have to type another password now whenever I launch WoW, but I feel that is a small price to pay for having a less-vulnerable system. Microsoft has finally caught up to the rest of the world in its approach to security, and I would commend them for that. I think better documentation, however, would go a long way towards allowing people to understand what is going on.

So if you happen to stumble across this page in your Google search for Vista UAC and World of Warcraft / WoW problems (gratuitous keyword reusage), I hope you find it useful.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

I have a Mistress...

...and her name is Warhammer Online.

The astounding lack of vision and communication regarding the Paladin class in general and Ret paladins in particular is only highlighted more by this post at Warhammer Alliance:

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61523

I'll wait.







Not that long, I have ADD.

I've been in the corporate world for a good long time, and I realize that the more power and influence you have, the less you should say. I also realize that you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. What is missing, however, is a lot of the "Why". Everyone wants to know Why, and someone (even if not the devs themselves) should be able to articulate that response. Kudos to Mythic for understanding that.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

I am made of pure Fail




Everyone has horrible pick-up group experiences. Everyone thinks everyone else is terrible. Chances are though, that at some point it's been you.

Lat night I offered to help 2 guild mates get through normal Magister's Terrace. "Find a healer, and I'll tank for you" I offered. Well they did, and off we went. Our group was Tankadin, Holydin, Elemental Shaman, Hunter, Rogue. Not my preferred group (no real AoE damage), but 2 cc classes, so it seemed workable.

My first clue that we were going to be horrible was that the holydin was really undergeared. Mostly greens, with the engineering helm. No problem, I thought, I would just use (shudder) crowd control to help him keep up. Never mind that Kael is hard for a good paladin to heal...

We wipe on the third trash pull when our hunter (who, to his credit, had never been in the zone before) face-pulled the trash pack on the other side of the tree while I was busy marking the pull in front of us.

The shaman send me a tell "If we wipe on the first boss I am out of here".

First boss goes down easy, and we actually power through Vex in one shot, although me and the holy are the only ones left standing in the end. Then the shaman has to leave. I hit the LFG
tool and there's a resto druid available. Well, 2 healers is probably not ideal, I thought, but we need a body and this is only normal mode. I grab the druid and we start clearing to the Priestess.

On the first 6 pull we almost wipe, but pull it out at the end, with just the druid and the holydin dead. On the second 6 pull we utterly fail at cc and wipe totally. At this point the druid says "I've had enough," and leaves. I look at the clock and decide that we might as well call it at this point.

Now put yourself in the druid's shoes. You get pulled into a PuG with an insane tankadin, an undergeared main healer, a hunter who can't trap, and a PvP-specced rogue. How long would you give us?

I am willing to give most people the benefit of the doubt. I think last night I was too forgiving... I knew, as soon as I saw who was in the rest of the group, that we were doomed. Yet I stuck with it, for probably too long. Then this poor druid comes along and finds himself in the middle of a horrible PuG and eats 2 deaths in the space of about 10 minutes. Yeah, I would quit too if it wasn't my guild-mates.

I'd like to blame Blizzard for this one, but the sad truth is that last night it was my turn to play the role of the "PuG from hell".

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Tankadins in WotLK

I am very, very excited about the class changes that were proposed for Paladins in Lich King. Seriously, I cried a little with joy when I first read the notes. IRL.

We have absorbed another guild, the Exiles of Loradeon, into our ranks, and we hope that this will push us over then edge into hitting critical mass for raiding all the time. We got a lot of good players, the trick is going to be trying to get people settled and comfortable.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

3 months

So it's been just over 3 months since my last post, and I haven't had the desire to write much. The demise of the Watchmen was sudden and painful, and I put myself into a position of responsibility by assuming a leadership role. Now, 3 months elapsed, I have been able to oversee a successful merger, and a return to T5 content. I want to do a post on how to do a successful guild merger, as well as thoughts on new content and so on.

I'm glad to be back.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

So that was unexpected

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. In the past week, my guild sharded and I have found myself in the position as GM for a new guild, Hope of Kul Tiras. Blogging from the outside has a different perspective than blogging from the inside, and I'm going to need some time to adjust and figure out what direction I should go from here.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

An Officer and a Gentlebear

Finally we get to some human interest! I have a strong academic interest in communication, leadership, and organizational behavior, and World of Warcraft guilds are like great little MBA petri dishes. If I thought I could get away with slipping “gnome warlock” into a dissertation, I would.

So recently, an Officer in my guild posted on our guild forums a short message asking for all of our stats in all of our sets. Now as far as our culture goes, I think we’re a very stat-happy and list-happy guild. We like numbers. We have minimum stats for T5 raid attendance (a.k.a. “You must be this tall to get on the ride”). We make lists of people in various categories. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s the way we are. We’ve been a functional guild for over 2 years, longer than any other guild on our server. We’re not in the top 10 for progression, but we are in the top 15. So this is, generally speaking, business as usual. I’m going to quote snippets because today we’re thinking about communication, and why not let people speak for themselves?

“For those of you declaring yourself tanks, please send me a P.M. with your unbuffed tanking stats. Please include the following:

Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your normal tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your nature resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your arcane resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your fire resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing your frost resist tanking gear
Unbuffed stats and resists wearing any other resist gear you can think of that you happen to own, except pvp...

(I realize that some of these resist sets aren't popular, but for sake of completeness, I'm including all of them. If you don't have any items from a resist set, just indicate as such.)

I need this info as soon as possible :) Sorry for the short notice.”
Now one of our senior bear tanks responded thusly:

“Coming up with these numbers is a bit of work and I will post them later today or tomorrow.

I want to point out that, at least for me, these are not static numbers. I am continually replacing items in my resist sets as fortune allows. Additionally, as fights arise that require any resist set, I tend to concentrate my efforts on improvement of that set. Every set in current use is as good as I can make it. Period. (Right now, for Guild runs, this is the Arcane Resist for TKTE, the Frost Resist for Hydross and the 150FrR/150NR for Hydross.)

To be honest, the resist gear situation is somewhat complicated.

I have, for example, two arcane resist tanking sets: One for Curator and one for Arcane Protectors and Void Reaver.

I have two Shadow Resist sets: One for use on a few shadow bosses and one for Malacrass in ZA. I expect that I will be working on a very complete SR set as we approach Black Temple.

My point, assuming I have one, is that tanking resist sets are specific to boss fights. Right now in our progression, a raid tank only needs a resist set for Hydross (Nature 290 or Frost 290 or 150Frost/150Nature.) By the time we reach any other boss that requires a certain set, all of us will have changed our gear to a greater or lesser degree. That's the nature of our insanity.

As indicated, another tanking resist set exists and is not on your list, above: 150 Frost and 150 Nature at the same time while uncrittable. This is used during the Hydross fight.

I will oganize this data and give you a snapshot. Anticipate boredom. (Unless you are a tank. And even then.)”

And then:

“Just re-read your post and noticed that you have asked us to list our gear.

I respectfully decline to list the roughly 100 separate pieces of resist gear that I use on all sets.”

At this point, another officer chimes in:

“I'm not speaking for [First Officer] at all, but understanding the reasons may help with this chore.

We need to get a qualified list together for SSC (immediate need, others will follow). This of course, can be a GO/NOGO type of thing. Additionally, we are getting ready to spend some mats on more resist gear for other tanks, and are trying to prioritize how best to use the primals provided to maximize our inventory.

Perhaps listing ALL resist gear isn't required, particularly if you have hit a "GO" status, but if your a "NOGO" SSC tank, we need to know which pieces you have in hand, and which ones we have to provide mats for.

Again, this is [First Officer]'s project, these are only my unsolicited comments, and I grant her all rights to poke me for getting involved.”

(cue air circulation device. What’s that I smell… it’s kind of foul…)

Our GM then weighs in:

“Post your shit.”

(What’s this? Someone has thrown excrement at the air circulation device! Now we are ALL covered in excrement! I had NO IDEA that was going to happen!)

I’m not going to post the rest, because things got much more heated, and then everyone calmed down a bit and worked it out. The bear posted the appropriate stats, and everyone who went off the ranch seemed to have returned.

So how did a well-intentioned idea (hey let’s find out what you need, so we can HELP you gear up), turn into a fairly nasty disagreement among a bunch of otherwise good friends? And how did Coristad, who cannot shut the hell up about anything, actually manage to stay out of the way?

“Ask, don’t tell.”

Come back on Thursday for the rest.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Loot Karma

I'm fairly sure I was bitten in the ass by the Loot Whore last night (a close relative of the Karma fairy). I have now, finally, for sure, accumulated enough Arena points for my Merciless Gladiator's Gavel. Last night on a guild ZA pug, we clear the Eagle boss and the Amani Punisher drops. I have been lusting after this weapon since it came out, and I've posted numerous times on my guild's forums loudly declaring how this was a major upgrade for me. Versus the gavel, I would be trading 8 spell damage and 18 resilience for 3 stamina, 3 intellect, and 5 spell hit rating. Plus the Punisher looks snazzy, the Gavel looks like a marshmellow on a stick. Other than that, they're arguably functionally equivalent, and I was quite happy that I wouldn't have to spend the arena points. Everyone in the raid congratulated me, and I was preparing to loot the item when our Boomkin pipes up that she's interested in it as well. Naturally, I roll a 12 and the boomkin loots the mace. QQ. She has an epic staff already. QQ. It sits in her bag because it's not enchanted and she left her off-hand frill in the bank. QQ.

At this point, I am furious, and so I start chain pulling mobs. We clear to the bear boss, at which point I comment to the boomkin about how she hasn't equipped the mace.

"Coristad you sound so bitter."
"Yeah, I'm really pissed about that roll, but I'm trying to get over it and not be a douche."
"Well, you get an 'A' for effort."

We laughed, because I was getting an "F" for performance.

After that, the weight lifted from my shoulders and I was able to relax and focus on the instance again.

In retrospect, the Loot Fairy was extracting her dues from the 2 Nether Vortexes I ninja-rolled from one of the guild's Prot warriors who has been trying for weeks to upgrade his sword.


I suppose you could make the case that I didn't need it, as I'm getting my upgrade, as scheduled, on Tuesday. However, that was the first time I had really lost my shit over a loot roll in 2 years of raiding. I'm just glad I was able to get through it in about 10 minutes, as opposed to letting it eat at me for hours/days/weeks.

Grats Cell, now equip the damn thing. ;-)

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Your weapon, your shield, and offtanking

I was busy farming arena points for my Merciless Gladiator’s Gavel when I get a tell from one of our tankadins who was having trouble maintaining a respectable place on the threat meter for Gruul’s. As I was in the middle of getting viciously pwned, I didn’t have time for a proper response. Bradford (of “What not to wear” fame), here’s your response.

OFF-TANKING the CORISTAD WAY (your mileage may vary)

Before the fight, I ask the raid leader if it’s at all possible to be put in a group with either a shadow priest or a shaman. Either will buff your threat capabilities significantly. It may not be possible, and you should plan on not having the luxury, but it never hurts to ask. Also before the fight, I equip as much spell damage and on-use trinkets as possible WITHOUT LOSING UNCRUSHABILITY. Keep in mind the whole purpose of being second on the list is to tank the boss in the event of a MT gib, so don’t put the cart before the horse and stack threat gear only to get savagely abused when it’s your turn to take the beatings. Now the fight is about to start, and the misdirect goes up on the MT.

First, I don’t wait for the assist call. All of the fights in our guild start with a misdirect upon the anointed warrior or feral tank. Unless the tank disconnects mid pull, you are not going to be able to pull threat. The hunters will dump a good 4K threat on them right off the bat. My opening sequence is low risk, and I need the head start. The DPS will start on the assist call. If you need to be ahead of the DPS, you start before them.

As I'm running up to the boss, I judge crusader on them and queue up Seal of Vengeance. I am a huge fan of Seal of Vengeance for off-tanking (and in general, actually), as it allows you to maintain threat even when repositioning, getting knocked back, and so forth. Righteousness can be harder to use for off tanking at this level because your mana flow is going to be dramatically reduced, but Judgement of Righteousness out performs Judgment of Vengeance when you reach about 800 spell damage. Depending on the mob, it may take you a while to figure out where is the best place to stand to make sure you’re actually hitting. I have found that a good trick is to go stand inside of a hunter pet—the AI will position the pet automatically behind the mob, which is where you want to be if at all possible. The in-fight positioning is the hardest thing about off tanking, IMO. The MT may move the mob around, and you might not realize that you’re not hitting, or consecrate is not ticking, until a few seconds, losing threat parity.

What I do next depends on the fight. For Gruul, it may be inadvisable to pop wings right away, as that first shatter can come sooner than planned. For Voidreaver, make sure that consecrate and judgement are off cooldown. If at all possible, I wait until you have a 5 stack of Holy Vengeance built up (Class Timers is a great mod for using with Seal of Vengeance). Now pop wings and unload. Ideally, you want to Consecrate, wings, Judge Vengeance, Reseal Vengeance, renew the 5 stack, shield toss, consecrate, judge and reseal Vengeance, renew the stack, consecrate, and judge again. Your goal is 3 max rank consecrates and 3 judgements in 30 seconds, which is why you have to cheat a little bit and start consecrate first. Since 2.3.2 we don’t get the benefit from having wings up at the start, so it makes more sense to wait for a 5 stack before unloading to get the most benefit from your cooldowns.

So now I'm about a minute into the fight and nearly out of mana. Take a mana pot now. If there is any environmental splash damage around, I start looking for some to draw some healing for some extra mana regeneration. Depending on where I am on the meter and the rate at which my blue rage bar is depleting, I might be able to judge wisdom on the boss and then reseal with vengeance again for some decent mana returns. I was actually able to take agro with Wisdom on Voidreaver, so the mana returns might make it worthwhile.

At this point in the fight, it’s all about cooldown and mana management. I switch to rank 4 consecrates and Judgements of Vengeance whenever they are up. Time your next wings for when you have at least 50-60% mana, as there’s nothing worse than popping wings and running out of mana with time left on the clock.

YOUR SHIELD


As you climb on the threat list, start working rank 1 Holy Shield into your rotation. Omen is a good predictor of agro, but when you get threat there can be a lag between when you start getting beaten on, and when the healers recognize that you are getting beaten. Don’t get crushed. Using this technique I was able to come from behind and take threat multiple times on Voidreaver, despite not receiving a single misdirect and having judgement of Wisdom on the target. Oh, and I have a Rep Reward Blue weapon.

YOUR WEAPON

As far as weapons go I admit I have been remiss in upgrading. Prior to 2.3, there was no real need for me to upgrade—DPS was not being capped, so status quo was fine. After 2.3 came out, I was convinced that I would run Zul Aman twice a week to get the Punisher. That didn’t happen, despite my efforts to the contrary. Then I ran Alterac Valley non-stop to push for the Season 1 mace. As of last week I had enough honor to get the mace, and I realized that I was approximately 1 week away from enough arena points to get the Season 2, so I spent the honor on the wonderful Medallion of the Alliance. So I passed on the Season 1, but my calculations came up slightly off, and as it turns out I’m really 2 weeks away. Next week I get to make the warriors cry in earnest. I already have more health than any other plate wearer in the guild, and equivalent armor. I am now going to improve my overall threat by about 40% just by upgrading my weapon.

Now get out there and make those warriors respec Arms! :D

Edit 1/31: added WWS screen shots.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Angry Waving of Fists

So last night I cleared enough Arena Points to get my Merciless Gladiator's Gavel, and I log in this morning to find that maintenance is in process. NO MACE MAKE TANK ANGRY. TANK SMASH!

Edit: I am a sad panda. My points calculator mods were inaccurate, and I am a measly 250 points away. S2 shall elude me another week.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Official Denial

Blue has weighed in on the supposedly leaked patch notes:

We have information in the works, but I'd caution people that it's not going to be today or even Monday, but we have plans and are working to put things together that will hopefully make the wait worthwhile.

I'd also caution people about getting their expectations up in regard to "sweeping class changes". Again, we have many things in the works and a definite plan of action that we will share with you all more as we progress.

As always, I'll remind people that if we don't post patch notes, they aren't the real deal. We create them, we post them, we make them reality. Don't supplant someone's fantasy patch notes for the real ones in your heads. It will only end in tears on so many fronts.


Too bad, really. Of course, if you really want to wrangle, you could argue that he's really not saying anything. All he said was that the notes are not the "real deal", which could easily mean they're not official, versus not true. He's not explicitly stating that changes referenced are not true. I don't really have a horse in this race, but it's always fun to speculate.

In other news I went to Zul Aman last night with a guild pick up group. The trash on the Bear boss gave us a challenge, and we cleared the gauntlet 3 times to the Eagle boss, without a kill. We had a mix of first timers and vets, and it's always worthwhile to get people exposure to new content for them, even if I net a 60G loss for the night.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Leaked 2.4 Changes and Paladins

World of Raids has a post up containing some allegedly leaked patch notes. I enjoy looking at the notes, and even if they're fake, I am easily amused. Let's see what's probably not in store for my favorite class.
Paladins
- Holy Shock: The cooldown has been reduced to 12 sec, from 15 sec and the amount of damage and healing done has been slightly increased.
- Avenger's Shield: The cast time has been reduced to 0.5 sec, down from 1 sec.
- Crusade: This talent now increases your spell damage and healing by 25/50% of your Strength.
- Sanctity Aura now increases all damage done by party members by 4%, but the Holy spell damage bonus has been removed.
- Improved Sanctity Aura has been removed.
- Sanctified Reach (New Retribution Talent): Increases the range of your Judgement and Hammer of Justice spells by 25/50% and the range of your Hammer of Wrath and Repentance spells by 10/20%.

When a +damage coefficient was added to healing gear, the Gladiator's aegis sets became largely obsolete (not that you can PVP as Prot anyway... or can you... another post for another day). Is this a slight nod in the direction of the shockadin crowd? And can we put Holy Shock in the Protection Tree? I'll give you stoicism and Improved Concentration Aura in exchange.

Halving the cast time on Avenger's shield is a nice touch. First, it helps with beating quick-draw mages to their polymorphs, thus invariably protecting their squishy arses. It's now slightly more viable while tanking, making it easier to weave into a threat rotation whenever the cooldown is up. Now if they would just lower the cooldown... :D

Crusade: This is the most interesting talent change. According to Gankbang, the top US Ret pally has about 800 or so strength and is rocking the T6 with Hyjal gems. So at the highest level, we're really only talking about 400 or so spell damage, which is fairly low, and will really only apply to Consecrate and Seal of Command. On the other hand, it's effectively free damage that makes sense, given the new direction of Retribution. Definitely intriguing. It would also be helpful for low-level tankadins to take, given the overall lack of spell damage on low-level plate gear and the tendency to wear warrior gear anyway. It would also make future itemization easier for Blizzard, as they could just start focusing on Strength for Paladins. Upper level tankadins could also go this route and wear as much warrior gear as they could, counting on this talent to provide the spell damage buff necessary to support Righteous Fury.

Changes to Sanctity Aura would also make sense, given the rebalancing of the Ret tree. As for the "reach" talent, it would help somewhat with the frustrating kiteability of Paladins in PvP.

As to the authenticity of the notes... they are fairly comprehensive, and the paladin changes make sense from a game designer standpoint, even if they do require us to rethink certain assumptions. In the end, real or not, it's fun to take a step back and play the "what if" game. Sure, I too, will believe it when I see it in blue, but that doesn't mean it's not fun to daydream a bit.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Leo Down!


What a roller-coaster night of raiding. We had 4 tries on Hydross, failing on a tank disconnect, 2 threshold crossings, and one time where there was a threshold crossing, 8 adds, and the raid took off to reset the event. Meanwhile, the Guild Leader and Main Tank, Daigan, was still fighting as Hydross was at about 10%.

"Guys, did I call for a reset?"

Crap.

On the fifth try, we get our act together and burn him down in about 5 minutes, which was our best time ever.

A fairly uneventful clear to Leo, at least until we get to his cave. We start wiping. Repeatedly. I had 10 deaths for the night-- 6 on Hydross (soul stoned 3 times) and 4 on the trash on the way to Leo. I think the consensus was just sloppy execution all around, particularly on crowd control. We finally clear the trash and are staring at Leo. At this point it's almost 12 on the East Coast and we all know this will be our last attempt for the night.

"Flask up."

Really? For one try? Well, it's an Ildari flask, so might as well-- the guild gave it to me, I use it at the guild's command. And then, everything clicked. DPS was spot on, healing was spot on, and all of the tanks were doing their best to keep Leo off the raid. 9 minutes and 37 seconds later, we had our first kill. 2 pally glove tokens dropped, and were won by our rogue and shaman. The Fang dropped as well, and our Warlock tank blew his DKP load to win the blade. Sadly, I was not even that interested-- I am about 1000 honor away from the season 1 mace, and maybe 2 weeks away from the S2, which is clearly an upgrade.

I am very proud of our guild. We had an atrocious night leading up to it, and we have only had 3 non-consecutive nights of working on him. That we were able to kill him after such a poor night is really a testament to the amount of talent present. Now if we can just focus a little more, we can increase our quality. We are a casual raiding guild. We raid 3 nights a week. We do not min/max our signups, it tends to be first come, first serve. So we're never really sure what we're going to have coming in. But we got the job done.

Looking at my personal performance, I noticed a few things. First, I felt on a few occasions that I was not able to keep up with the DPS, threat wise. Unfortunately, I am still using the continuum blade. I have been debating whether or not to get the S1 gavel, and then the S2 gavel a week later. I think that might be a huge waste of honor, when I could just get the trinket, but our DPS has really amped up their performance. The third option might be to just pass on another few raids until I can get the S2. I could then buy the Battlemaster's Audacity to bump my threat and give me a mini-last stand effect.

Another issue, looking at the WWS parse for the Leo kill, is the impact that Seal of Vengeance had on the fight. Despite the dot missing 10% of the time, and the Judgement missing a whopping 26%, these two abilities still accounted for significantly more damage than consecrate. Boosting spell hit here would help dramatically. The heroic badge rewards are loaded with spell hit, and I wasn't wearing most of them, instead opting for 4 piece T4. I think this actually boosts the priority for the new belt, versus the legs.

Finally, I have been slacking overall on my heroics. I have been attempting to spend more time in AV, farming honor for the S1 mace, and turning down heroic invites. Now as close as I am to S2, I might have better spent my time getting badges to improve my overall gear level.

The takeaway for a broader audience on this is probably just to focus on getting that S2 weapon and just plug away, week after week, until you can get it. That gradual process will allow you to maintain a sizable threat lead on your DPS while clearing your mind and allowing you to focus on whatever other areas of weakness you may have.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Personal choices can be wrong

Chris Jahosky on WowInsider has a build shop article highlighting a really atrocious 0/46/15 build. Here is the build:

Protection (46 points)

5/5 Redoubt
3/3 Precision
2/2 Guardian's Favor
5/5 Toughness
1/1 Blessing of Kings
3/3 Improved Righteous Fury
3/3 Shield Specialization
2/2 Spell Warding
1/1 Blessing of Sanctuary
2/2 Sacred Duty
5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization
2/2 Improved Holy Shield
1/1 Holy Shield
5/5 Ardent Defender
5/5 Combat Expertise
1/1 Avenger's Shield

Retribution (15 points)

5/5 Benediction
5/5 Deflection
3/3 Vindication
2/3 Pursuit of Justice


I'll give you a moment to digest that.

BAD BLOGGER! NO BISCUIT!


Some of his explanations directly conflict with what he is trying to accomplish. I am going to quote liberally from the article and the comments thread-- all block quotes are his words unless indicated otherwise.

The most scandalous suggestion I'm making in this build is not picking up Reckoning, but I have a few reasons why -- read on to find out.


No, actually that is fairly well accepted in the Tankadin community. Vindication is probably the most scandalous suggestion.

Guardian's Favor - Reduces the cooldown of BoP by 2 minutes, and increases the duration of BoF by 4 seconds. Sometimes a mob gets loose and goes straight for a healer or other squishy -- this can be used to give you time to re-establish aggro without danger to the squishy (provided that they're not getting spells cast at them).


The number of situations where this is useful in PvE are almost precisely zero. Let's say a mob breaks loose and does, indeed head straight for your mage. Taunt! Oh crap, taunt resisted, BoP the mage. Yay mage is safe, healer gets pwned. Taunt and BoP are still on cooldown... um, Judgement of Righteousness! Crap, it's on cooldown because I neglected to take the two points to improve it. Avenging Shield! Crap, only 15 seconds into the fight and I pulled with it. Healer dies, the mage is tanking, and your PuG is in trouble.

The only situation where I have ever thought to myself "Gee, I wish I had Guardian's Favor" in a PvE setting is on Moroes to help out with Garotte, and even then my priest gets the first one reserved for them. That's it. One fight, which most people tend to outgear fairly rapidly. I'm sorry, as a protection pally I have to be ruthless when it comes to spending talent points-- so many of my choices are spoken for already.

Toughness - Increases armor from items by 10%. This one is a toss-up. Some paladins like having this and anticipation, some like one or the other. I like Toughness since my Prot Paladin is already at 490 defense, but your mileage may vary.


Anticipation is MANDATORY. This is non-negotiable. Once you reach the 490 defense cap, you can start taking out your defense trinkets and putting in more useful ones, like stamina, avoidance, or even threat if you feel like it. Even if you never make it to SSC and the resist fights there, the flexibility in gear selection this talent gives you is justification for "mandatory" status.

Vindication - It's up to you how to spend these last 5 points, but I like putting 3 of them in Vindication to decrease the target's stats by 15%. It may not work on bosses, but it's pretty good for trash.


You know what else is pretty good on trash? DPS. We do not spec for trash, ladies and gentlemen-- that's why it's called Trash. We spec for bosses. Those 3 points alone are the entire reason for this commentary. This is a PvP talent, plain and simple. Take it if you want to PvP (poorly), but don't attempt to justify this choice behind the old "good for trash" arguement. You know what else is good for trash? Tanking without pants. Solves all of your mana problems and impresses the ladies. Oh yeah, you know what I'm talking about, baby. No that's not a Merciless Gladiator's Gavel in my pocket, 'cause I got no pockets. Ka-chow!

FALLACY OF OPINION

There are people in this world who attempt to justify poorly reasoned beliefs by saying "It's my opinion, so it cannot be wrong." This is false. If your belief (which is a strongly held opinion) contradicts reality, it is wrong. If your opinion does not even support the premise that you were incorrectly attempting to justify with its use, it is wrong. This build is wrong.

"There is no perfect build, every build has its use."

I challenge you to describe to me a tanking situation where this build would excel.

It fails as a 5 man build - you want to stack spell damage for PuGs, for which you need Anticipation.

It fails as an Off Tank spec - Improved Seal of the Crusader beats the pants off Vindication for raid utility.

It fails as a Main Tank spec - You want improved Judgement to maximize threat, particularly if you favor Seal of Vengeance, and of course Vindication is useless.

It fails as a PvP build - Not picking up Seal of the Crusader, or Stoicism, or even maxing out Pursuit of Justice.

In short, the build accomplishes nothing that a tankadin would want to accomplish. Other than, perhaps, providing grist for a hastily written article to meet a deadline.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

What Not to Wear- Tankadin Edition

Well I was planning on talking about Loot, but I Tivo'd this great episode of my most favorite program, What Not to Wear.

What Not To Wear - Tankadin Edition

I’m Coristad McStacy-Clinton, and welcome to What Not to Wear – Tankadin edition, the show where we take Paladins who are still dressing like noobs and give them a FABULOUS makeover, courtesy of Warcrafter.Net. Unlike our sister show, we don’t have a $5000 Visa™ card for people to go shopping with, but we do have URLs! Now let’s meet our first fashion victim.

Meet Bradford. Bradford is a level 70 Protection-spec Paladin and an up-and-coming member of the Watchmen Tanking Team. Unfortunately, Bradford’s professional wardrobe is not quite up to the job, and his talent selection still screams “I’m a new level 70 ROFLMAOBBQ!!1!”. I’m going to help Bradford dress for success.

SPEC

As it turns out, attitude ISN’T everything—talent(s) count, too. Bradford has some points that could be reallocated to give him a little more bang for his tanking buck. First, Improved Devotion Aura has GOT to go. This is a poor choice for a Tankadin as the armor bonus is flat and does not scale. The real reason why this is a poor choice, however, is that the talent we really want is Shield Specialization, and to get there we have to go through Redoubt. It’s not that Redoubt is a bad talent, it just gets less useful as you get better gear. Anything that requires you to be hit to proc is going to suffer this problem. It will still have a reasonable proc rate, and when it does proc your healers will thank you. So Bradford, the first thing is to take the 5 points and move them over from Improved Devotion Aura and in to Redoubt.

Shield Spec is a 30% buff to Block value. This is crucial for two key reasons. First, it scales with gear. As you get better shields, you block proportionally more incoming damage. The second reason is that, first and foremost, a tankadin is expected to hold down as many mobs as their health will allow, and the key to doing that is effective blocking. So we need 3 points from somewhere. The rest of the spec is solid, and the Prot tree is pretty bloated, so pulling those points from somewhere is tough. The simplest answer is to drop Reckoning.

We all love Reckoning, and it’s a fine talent, but there’s not room for it in a Raid tanking spec. Now that Combat Expertise is required, Reckoning falls victim to not having enough points to go around. The good news is that you won’t miss it—you are hitting more because of the Expertise changes, and so your threat is actually quite solid. Burst threat that you cannot control is not going to help you in a raid situation. Drop reckoning and put 3 points into Shield Spec. Now you have 2 leftover points.

The most optimal choice is to drop those points into Precision. Not only are you getting +3% melee hit, which affects Taunt and Avenging Shield, but +3% spell hit, which affects Judgments and Seals. 3 points is effectively giving you +6% to hit—you are not going to find a better value for 2 points. You could potentially put them in to Spell Warding, which is a viable choice, but most tankadins just opt to stack stamina to give the healers more breathing room, rather than attempt to mitigate a small amount of spell damage.

GEAR


Now that talents are in order, let’s talk about Gear. A well-dressed Tankadin is looking for 3 things in a boss gear set: Uncrushability, Stamina, and Spell Damage, in that order. There are fights that will favor Spell Damage over Stamina (Void Reaver, for example), but no matter what, if it’s level 73 it’s going to crush you (with a few exceptions). Warcrafter does not take into account the 5.33% block from the Libram of Repentence, so the real number that we’re going for to reach uncrushable is 102.4 (Dodge+Parry+Block+Miss required against a L73 mob) – 30 (Holy Shield) – 5.33 (Libram of Repentence) = 67.07. Right now, Bradford is showing 66.55, leaving a difference of 0.52%. The good news is that Bradford is only one gem or enchant away from uncrushability, which means we can get to the fun stuff quickly- stacking Stamina. Let’s take a look at Bradford’s closet and see what fashion rules he had broken.

First, Bradford has too much defense. A tank only needs 490 Defense to avoid a critical hit from a level 73 mob. Bradford has 526- that is a lot of wasted defense. The next fashion faux-pax is too much attention is being paid to socket bonuses. By and large, none of the socket bonuses are worth the trade off in Stamina. There are some exceptions, but generally speaking, Blue is the new Black: It goes with everything.

Second, some of the pieces are just inappropriate for Brad’s place in life right now. The biggest immediate change Bradford can do is to get very friendly with the Dragons in the Caverns of Time and grab himself a nice pair of their Timewarden Legs. They have less armor and less defense, but much more Stamina and Dodge, both of which are sorely needed.

The Slikk’s Cloak is very “In” right now, but the accessorizing is all wrong. Agility is not a Paladin stat, and you get more pure avoidance from the Dodge Enchant.

The single biggest change that Bradford could get that would get him well over the avoidance cap is picking up the Faceguard of Determination. This is one of the best avoidance pieces in the game, and for only 50 Heroic Badges it’s a bargain. If we add this piece we get to 68.89 Avoidance, which is actually over what we need. That means… more Stamina! Time to take out the remaining Parry gems (which are really not for us, either—again you get more pure avoidance from Dodge)


Here’s what Bradford looks like fully-dressed:

http://www.warcrafter.net/sandbox/18535




Presto, an uncrushable, high Stamina tank that is ready to hold down the room with his charm, good looks, and a well placed Consecration. So there you have it! Tune in next week when we talk about how to dress for Serpent Shrine Cavern.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Rethinking Loot?

Egopriest has a great post today from guest-author, EgoTank. It's worth the read yourself, but the gist is that he favors a merit-based loot system, largely based on his self-described merits. Whether his claims are true or not, they are thought-provoking. We're not going to dissect the article, but we are going to talk about loot distribution systems in general over the next four posts.

Part 1: What makes a good loot system? (Thursday)
Part 2: Merit-based systems (Tuesday 1/22)
Part 3: Luck-based systems (Thursday 1/24)
Part 4: Other systems (Tuesday 1/29).

Thursday, January 10, 2008

LOLFIRST!!1!

Everyone has to start somewhere.

I started playing World of Warcraft in January of 2006. In February of 2006, I was lucky enough to join the Watchmen, the finest guild on Kul Tiras. I started, as we all did, without the slightest clue on how to do anything, really. I love to learn, though, and so I read. Everything. Even the bad stuff.

It took me several months, but I finally leveled to 60 and started raiding Molten Core with the guild. I got my Aurastone Hammer, which was absolutely the sign that you had "made it" as a paladin. Aside from a brief stint as a reckbomber in the 40s, I was holy for most of my career.

Patch 2.0, we're doing BWL. I grind out 2 epic PvP pieces in Alterac Valley as a Ret Pally. 6 second Crusader Strikes plus bubbles = GG.

Burning Crusade. I respec to holy/prot and start levelling. Turns out, hitting things with a hammer is a lot of fun. Ding, 61. What the hell, I'll level to 70 as Protection.

Today. 15K unbuffed health. Finally accepted as a "real tank" by my peers. Success is sweet, but short lived. You are only as good as your last raid, amiright?

Hang on kids, the ride is just getting started.