PTR Stuff: Nerfs and Buffs

So, this is probably about the only PTR post you'll see by me. I'm one of those people who knows almost nothing about an upcoming patch past the really big and usually controversial stuff. At the moment, it seems to be the nerf to the Druid's Lifebloom skill. It's being nerfed to 80% of it's current power (or something like that), and all resto druids (as well as other players) are really up in arms about this. I am not.



As with any major nerf (not major as in a big nerf, major as in the one everybody's talking about) comes two opposing sides. The "l2p" side feels that the nerf was justified, that the class was OP and the balance of power was being disruped by them (Balance of Power in 2v2s? Nowai). The other side, the "we didn't deserve this" has the opposite mindset. They feel that the nerf is completely unjustified and that...well, they didn't deserve it. They feel that this nerf could end the viability of their class, to the point where they may consider respeccing or rerolling.

I say nay to either side. I am in the middle. The rigged end of the dime, so to speak. Blizzard has its reasons for everything they do, and I respect that. I cannot say whether the nerf is a make-or-break type of thing to a class, but I do know that if the nerf does disrupt the viability of the class in either pvp or pve, Bliz will work to fix it (perhaps with some readjustment on the player's side). I recall a similar nerf to druids a while ago, about feral tanks, armor reduction, and life loss. I also recall that I OT'd Karazhan on Saturday with my Feral tank.

The moral of the story is: Don't take patch changes so hard, everyone. It's just a game, and another patch is always around the corner.

Continue reading 'PTR Stuff: Nerfs and Buffs'

Pally Powers Pt. 1: Holy

So I've been beating around the bush too much. I've been making CA more of a WoW diary than an informational site about Paladins, as I had initially intended. I enjoy doing both, so I'm going to be doing both. Anything with the label "WoW Journal" will be just that. My WoW journal. My Epic flight form post, guild posts, things like that will fall here. Anything labeled "WoW Info" will be informational posts, intended to increase the knowledge about paladins to whomever happens to be reading this.

That being said, let's get some Info down. Pally Powers. Namely, the skills and abilities you as a paladin will have at level 70. I mentioned before that I wanted to do something like this, and I figure now is as good a time as any to do it. I will start this three-parter with the holy skills.

[Edit] Hey, look at that! I managed to create the post divider! Look!



HEALING SPELLS:

Holy Light Rank 11
840 Mana 40 yd range
2.5 sec cast
Heals a friendly target for 2196 to 2446.

This spell is the paladin’s second strongest heal, save only for Lay on Hands. It is a relatively fast, hard healing, extremely mana-intensive heal, and is only truly useful in emergency situations where you need those huge numbers. Holy-specced paladins can buff this for higher crit, as well as for Light’s Grace; whenever you cast this spell, your next holy light spell will cost .5 seconds less, giving you 2-second HLs.

Flash of Light Rank 7
180 Mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Heals a friendly target for 448 to 502.

This is the paladin’s main heal. Most of the time, it is their only heal. If you’re a raid paladin, this is often the only skill you’ll use. It has a very short cast time to heal for a decent amount, and is one of the most mana-efficient spells in the game. I’ve seen paladins go on for well over 10 minutes spamming nothing but this and not running out of mana.

Lay on Hands Rank 4
40 yd range
Instant 1 hr cooldown
Heals a friendly target for an amount equal to the Paladin's maximum health and restores 900 of their mana. Drains all of the Paladin's remaining mana when used.

This is a very unique skill. It depletes the paladin’s entire mana pool (be it 1500 mana or 0 mana) to heal his or her target for…well, you can read. It’s an emergency-only skill, obviously, with its one hour cooldown. If Prince is down to 8% life and you’re out of mana, you see the tank with a chunk of life from him, pop him a Lay on Hands, drink a pot (nub) and let the rest of the raid kill kill kill. Talented, you reduce the cooldown on LoH by 10/20 minutes, as well as increasing your target’s armor by 15/30% for 3 minutes.

Purify
6% of base Mana 40 yd range
Instant cast
Purifies the friendly target, removing 1 disease effect and 1 poison effect.

Purify is a very nice move, allowing the paladin to effectively remove two debuffs at one time for a moderate mana cost. This skill becomes obsolete, however, once you learn Cleanse.

Cleanse
6% of base Mana 40 yd range
Instant cast
Cleanses a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 magic effect.

Cleanse is Purify + magic. And it costs the same amount of mana. Extremely nice, giving the paladin one move to remove all debuffs save for physical and curses. Talk to your neighborhood druid about that.

Redemption Rank 5
64% of base Mana 30 yd range
10 sec cast
Brings a dead player back to life with 600 health and 800 mana. Cannot be cast when in combat.

It’s a resurrection. It’s nice to have. It’s more expensive than the priest rez, but much less expensive as the shaman rez. It heals for less than the priest rez but the same amount as the shaman rez. Did Shamans get hosed? Reincarnation, anyone?

SEALS:

Seal of Righteousness Rank 9
260 Mana
Instant cast
Fills the Paladin with holy spirit for 30 sec, granting each melee attack an additional [cond(eq(HND,1),0.85 * (2610.43 * MWS / 100) + 0.03 * (MW + mw) / 2 - 1,1.2 * (2610.43 * MWS / 100) + 0.03 * (MW + mw) / 2 + 1)] Holy damage. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.
Unleashing this Seal's energy will cause 208 to 228 Holy damage to an enemy.

SoR is a pretty important skill for both shockadins and tankadins (though some do opt for Seal of Vengeance). It adds steady, nonmitigated damage to every swing. That mathematical mumbo jumbo, simply put, means that you will deal more holy damage with each swing when using a slow weapon, as opposed to a fast one. This is to balance out the skill so that you deal roughly the same amount of damage no matter what weapon you use. “Unleashing this Seal’s energy” means that the said effect will occur when you cast Judgment, a retribution skill, on your enemy.

Seal of Light Rank 5
280 Mana
Instant cast
Fills the Paladin with divine light for 30 sec, giving each melee attack a chance to heal the Paladin for 133. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, granting melee attacks made against the judged enemy a chance of healing the attacker for 95. Your melee strikes will refresh the spell's duration. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

One of the paladin’s lesser-used skills. It gives you a chance to regain life with each swing of your weapon. Judged, the effect is weakened and every person who attacks the mob can gain life. It is mainly used when you have a retribution paladin in the group as well as a few other paladins. The ret paladin can keep all judgments on the mob, so the healer paladin can quickly run in and judge this to give the tank a bit of extra healing.

Seal of Wisdom Rank 4
270 Mana
Instant cast
Fills the Paladin with divine wisdom for 30 sec, giving each melee attack a chance to restore 121 of the Paladin's mana. Only one Seal can be active on the Paladin at any one time.
Unleashing this Seal's energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, granting attacks and spells used against the judged enemy a chance to restore 74 mana to the attacker. Your melee strikes will refresh the spell's duration. Only one Judgement per Paladin can be active at any one time.

Seal of Light, only with mana. It’s more commonly used when soloing if the paladin has a small mana pool, but is less often used in raid situations, as only hunters and protection paladins can benefit from it (casters can wand to regain mana, but really, they should have the means to keep their mana up without sacrificing so much dps).

BLESSINGS:

Blessing of Wisdom Rank 7
150 Mana 30 yd range
Instant cast
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, restoring 41 mana every 5 seconds for 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Paladin buff of choice among healers and casters whose dps isn’t quite enough to pull agro from the tank. It’s simply marvelous, too. Only downside is it’s only a 10 minute buff. Expect to either rebuff everyone often or invest some money into Symbols of Kings.

Greater Blessing of Wisdom Rank 3
310 Mana 40 yd range
Instant cast
Reagents: Symbol of Kings
Gives all members of the raid or group that share the same class with the target the Greater Blessing of Wisdom, restoring 41 mana every 5 seconds for 30 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Blessing of Wisdom to each person of the class. It’s rather silly how they made paladin buffs, what with all the hybrids and such. At least they buffed the duration from 15 minutes to 30 minutes.

Blessing of Light Rank 4
180 Mana 30 yd range
Instant cast
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing the effects of Holy Light spells used on the target by up to 580 and the effects of Flash of Light spells used on the target by up to 185. Lasts 10 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

This is a great buff for tanks with the majority of the heals coming from paladins. It’s often not used, however, when the tanks opt for either might or wisdom(pally tanks) or kings if you have it.

Greater Blessing of Light Rank 2
360 Mana 40 yd range
Instant cast
Reagents: Symbol of Kings
Gives all members of the raid or group that share the same class with the target the Greater Blessing of Light, increasing the effects of Holy Light spells used on the target by up to 580 and the effects of Flash of Light spells used on the target by up to 185. Lasts 30 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Not much more to say on this. It’s the same as BoL as far as buffing.

VS. UNDEAD AND DEMONS:

Exorcism Rank 7
340 Mana 30 yd range
Instant cast 15 sec cooldown
Causes 619 to 691 Holy damage to an Undead or Demon target.

A very cheap, hard hitting move directed toward undead and demons. As a shockadin or a holy paladin soloing, I consider it a free Holy Shock. Great for soloing these enemy types and Kara.

Holy Wrath Rank 3
825 Mana
2 sec cast 1 min cooldown
Sends bolts of holy power in all directions, causing 635 to 745 Holy damage to all Undead and Demon targets within 20 yds.

This is a hard skill to judge (haha pun, get it?). On one hand, it deals a lot of damage to undead and demons. On the other hand, it has a huge mana cost and a 2 second cast time. I’ve seen this as a prot paladin’s preferred way of pulling in Kara. It’s also nice for a ret pally on those ballroom dancer pulls in there. When soloing, it’s rather difficult for it to be worth the mana cost, as the only reason you would use it is if you had a bunch of undead or demon mobs pummeling you. However, trying to pull this off with a bunch of undead or demon mobs pummeling you will turn the 2 second cast time into a 6 second cast time, and by then it’s just not worth it. Maybe DS HW? I dunno. I don’t use this skill.

Turn Undead Rank 3
75 Mana 20 yd range
1.5 sec cast 30 sec cooldown
The targeted undead enemy will be compelled to flee for up to 20 sec. Damage caused may interrupt the effect. Only one target can be turned at a time.

Another seldom-used skill in the arsenal of a paladin, and for good reason. While soloing, you fear your enemy and it will run away faster than you can keep up with it. And it may run into other mobs. In raids, you’ll only see it used in Kara, on moroes. If the hunter’s trap breaks early, you may pally fear them. It’s on a 30 second cooldown and only a 20 second duration, so you can’t pally cc like a lock can fear cc.

Sense Undead
Instant
Shows the location of all nearby undead on the minimap until cancelled. Only one type of tracking can be used at a time.

Not many paladins even have this skill, as it’s a quest reward. It’s pretty useless, in all honesty. However, completing the quest chain will grant you a nice mace or polearm.

MISCELLANEOUS SPELLS:

Consecration Rank 6
660 Mana
Instant cast 8 sec cooldown
Consecrates the land beneath the Paladin, doing 512 Holy damage over 8 sec to enemies who enter the area.

This skill sends out a radius around the paladin for eight seconds, dealing constant damage to enemies within it. It’s useful for pally tanks for agro gain, though its large mana costs means you won’t see it up constantly. It’s great to protect the paladin from rogue sap/cheap shot ( so long as you downrank to rank 1 so as not to waste all of your mana). It doesn’t deal a lot of damage to a single enemy, but if the paladin is the target of a lot of enemies, using it can really help.

Hammer of Wrath Rank 4
440 Mana 30 yd range
0.5 sec cast 6 sec cooldown
Hurls a hammer that strikes an enemy for 665 to 735 Holy damage. Only usable on enemies that have 20% or less health.

Ahh, paladin execute. It’s a great move, no doubt. In PvP and in soloing, it’s the finisher. In raids, you can spam it every six seconds for massive damage. It’s not listed, but the crit damage for this spell is doubled (whereas it’s usually 1.5x, I believe), so critting is especially nice.

Summon Warhorse Summon
100 Mana
3 sec cast
Summons a warhorse, which serves as a mount. Speed is increased by 60%.

Free mount FTW

Summon Charger Summon
150 Mana
3 sec cast
Summons a Charger, which serves as a mount. Speed is increased by 100%.

Not-so-free mount. You don’t need to spend the gold to train in epic land riding, but you do have to dish out a lot of gold while in the quest to get this beauty of a mount. You end up saving about 200 gold, which is nice, but it’s much more hastle and, with BC, it’s very difficult to find people willing to do the Pre-BC 60 instances you need to do in order to get it.

TALENTS:

Divine Favor
3% of base Mana
Instant cast 2 min cooldown
When activated, gives your next Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock spell a 100% critical effect chance.

Need a big heal? Here it is. Blast your Divine Favor and push out a huge heal with your Flash of Light. Also great for shockadins, as the damage part of Holy Shock still triggers DF’s crit.

Holy Shock Rank 5
650 Mana 20 yd range
Instant cast 15 sec cooldown
Blasts the target with Holy energy, causing 721 to 779 Holy damage to an enemy, or 913 to 987 healing to an ally.

A versatile skill, and an expensive one. It’s an instant cast heal, able to be used every 15 seconds. At the same time, it’s the paladin’s burst damage. Shockadins can make this skill hurt. A lot.

Divine Illumination
Instant 3 min cooldown
Reduces the mana cost of all spells by 50% for 15 sec.

A very nice move, especially when used in conjunction with Holy Light spamming for those emergency situations. Usable every 3 minutes, you can pop two or three of these in many raid bosses, effectively saving you a lot of mana.

Continue reading 'Pally Powers Pt. 1: Holy'

Epic Flight Form in 21 Easy Steps

Are you a slow bird? Are you tired of having to continually yell "Hey guys, wait up! I only fly at 60%!"? Want to show them up? Want to pop into bird form instantly and zoom away while they're sitting around for three seconds to mount up? Well, this 21 step program will let you do just that! And now for a limited time, you can learn these steps for FREE! That's right, just keep reading and you can engage in this 21 step program, a $29.99/month value, for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! You'd have to be crazy to pass this up! BUT THAT'S NOT ALL!!! Included in this program are pictures for your convenience!

Step 1: Get money

Step 2: Buy skill

Step 3: Talk to a druid trainer

Step 4: Talk to Morthis

Step 5: Collect herbs - Be careful! They explode!

Step 6: Go to Barrow Den, Find sleeping druid

Step 7: Find relics while half-in the emerald dream - Ohnoes! Kill the Aspect!

Step 8: Return to Morthis

Step 9: Find Arthorn

Step 10: Kill aether rays, use their eyes to see dead birdmen, question Sai’kkal

Step 11: Visit Elaira

Step 12: Catch a Sparrowhawk

Step 13: Find Raven Stones in Skettis with the help of said Sparrowhawk

Step 14: Obtain the Essence of the Eagle from the Guardian of the Eagle

Step 15: Obtain the Essence of the Falcon from the Guardian of the Falcon

Step 16: Obtain the Essence of the Hawk from the Guardian of the Hawk

Step 17: Return to Morthis once again - Obtain sexy trinket

Step 18: Find a Southfury Moonstone

Step 19: Kill Anzu

Step 20: Talk to Morthis one last time

Step 21: Enjoy Epic flight form!

That's it! Now you, too, can fly at blinding speed with the best them!



In all seriousness, it's an amazing thing, epic flight form. The questline is amazingly easy up to step 16, as that guy has a crazy resistance to physical attacks and hits like a truck. I had to get a fellow caster guildie to help me out.

It was the second time I had killed Anzu, the first from a PUG who had a mage. It was much easier the first time, as Anzu banishes himself and summons a bunch of nonelite birds you need to kill. The group I went with for my quest had no aoe capability, so it took much longer to down them. Overall, it's a very easy kill, though. No Anzu mount made me sad, but I didn't really expect it anyway. Summoning him and fighting him is a pretty fun encounter, and it looks pretty cool, too.

Clouds form above the talon
Lightning begins striking the cloud, which turns into Anzu, the Raven God.
This is just a really cool picture.
I tried to get a good picture of the birds he summons, but it was very hard to. This is the best I could get.
Though I failed to get a picture of it, there are statues that the healer (or the druid if you have a pally healer) that give buffs and debuffs to the party and the enemies.

So! Now that I've managed to get my epic flight form (which I've been working nonstop for a week or two [the reason I haven't updated in so long]), what will I do next? Buff up my toons. Twalkins can enchant his own stuff, but I need to pay for enchants on Twalvanis. That has the potential to get pretty expensive, so I have some dailies to keep doing (as well as some new netherwing dailies!).

And keep in mind, I have another character to get epic flight form for, as well as another druid to help get epic flight form. So I'm by no means done with needing money.

Continue reading 'Epic Flight Form in 21 Easy Steps'

BA Shared Topic: New Class, New Party Roll

Fumbleknock has posted Blog Azeroth's next shared topic: Should WoW implement a new class that will break the tank heal dps trinity?

I'm not quite sure how I stand on this issue. It's a delicate subject, methinks, and if Blizzard were to create a fourth to the trinity, it'd have to be done very carefully, as there are not many options that won't make some aspect of the game overpowered.

Most people seem to think that the most likely candidate to fill this position would be some form of crowd-control class. The first thing that comes to mind immediately after hearing this is 2v2. Imagine a mage and a CC-class. The cc-class keeps the healer out of commission for the 10 or so seconds it'll take for the mage to destroy the other of the team. Game over. It might make raids safer, but sometimes the best time is had when we accidentally pull another elite or a group of mobs and we actually have to work to down the pull.

Another popular answer is a sort of buffer class, one to improve an aspect of the trinity. This can be easily done without making the class overpowered - Three talent trees: defense buffs, attack buffs, heal buffs. Maybe physical power buffs, magical power buffs, defense buffs. Something along those lines. The most popular selection for this would be a bard, but I don't think that would work for the sheer bore factor. A bard plays songs to buff, and therefore will be just kinda sitting there, playing a song. One, it takes no skill to hit 1 and let your song play. Two, few people in their right mind would want to play a class that requires you to hit one button a minute. This can be offset, perhaps, if you give the bard some healing ability that will allow them to heal in emergencies, but in the long run, I don't think it'd be a very fun class to play.

Still on the subject of a buffer class, we could make a not-bard. I don't know what we could call it, but it would work in a similar way with the talent trees. Contrary to the bard, though, the buffs can be cast and done with (much like warrior shouts, but probably much shorter), leaving the class some time to actually mash some buttons. I'm always leaning toward healing ability for a buffer class, but it could be dependent on what tree you choose, too. The healing buff tree will allow the player to off-off heal (not enough to completely replace a healer class), physical damage buff allowing them to get right in on the action and hit some things, etc. I'm really kind of liking this idea. The class has the potential to be very involved. Buffs that need to be re-cast often leave room to switch buffs (from, say, attack power boost to damage reduction boost) as needed. Continue reading 'BA Shared Topic: New Class, New Party Roll'

Karagain...Again

So! New week, new raid. This time I made a last-second decision to switch to my feral druid and beat out some DPS. It was Button's and Derae's first time in Kara (They've been seventy for only a few days and are already geared for Kara. How awesome is that?)

Anyway, our hunter PUG said he wanted a full clear. This meant that we had some work to do, but we decided to give it a try.

Attunmen down, Moroes down. He dropped his watch, but even though I won the roll, I gave it to Button, for he was the one tanking the fight. Maiden down, I obtain some shiny new bracers. We're doin good. I believe we had to rearrange and pick up someone else, as our other feral druid had to step out. Opera went off without a hitch. We tried Nightbane (as our PUG priest could summon), but we didn't have the heals to keep the tank up. Curator dropped a nice ring that I need for the hit rating, but our hunter ganked it from me (It's okay, though. Our mage ganked the gloves from him). Shade down, skip Illhoof (no lock) chess done (Button got his sword), two wipes on Prince, one wipe on Nethersprite. We called it a night, going to finish the last bosses on Saturday.

I'm going to be DPSing again for the last bosses. I can't wait, it's a nice break from FOL spam. Continue reading 'Karagain...Again'

Karagain

Saturday was probably the best Karazhan run our guild has had in months. Attunmen, Moroes, Maiden, Romule and Julienne, and Curator. An hour and a half. No priest. Pet tanks. Yeah, that's right.

Attunment was pretty standard. Moroes, semi-standard. No priests means no shackle, but three hunters and three paladins means plenty of cc for the adds. No problems here. Maiden? We didn't need Sorli to one-man her, because she went down smooth. No mace, though. Should we call it a night? We don't have any priests...

No way. We're doing far too well. How do we get to Opera, though? Well, we have two tanks, one arms pvp warrior, and three pets. Who needs shackle? Everything worked out. Pets died, but did their part of being aggro cushons for the ice tombed tanks. We get to the opera event. It's Romulo and Julienne. We have two mages and a warrior for interrupts. That should be enough. Julienne goes down, Romulo goes down, they revive, we tank them in their respective corners. 20% on both, bring them to the middle together. Romulo's down, Julienne...healed. Ruh roh. Okay, back to the corners. Romulo goes down to 20%, then Julienne, back to the center. Romulo goes down and Julienne...freaking heals again! Okay, back to the corners. Romulo gets to 20% for the third time, then Julienne. Bring it back to the middle. Okay. Let's kill Julienne first. She goes down, Romulo falls seconds later. That's how you do opera.

But we're not done yet. It's still early and we're all pumped from such a good run. Let's take Curator. We plow through the trash and get to curator. No problems with it, we down him in one shot again. Celebration ensues. We hope Monday we can finish the raid with just as much success.

Not quite so. Half the people don't show up for the raid, so we end up pugging two more healers and a dps (dps was drunk, one healer was high, the other had the "I'm better than you and can yell at you because I've done this more than you even though this is your raid" mindset. I freaking hate that guy. It started out rough, and then we wipe on Shade about four times before downing him. Dumb mistakes. We skip illhoof due to lack of lock. Chess is...well, chess. The healing shield drops, and I'm the only one who needs it. Prince was a wipe and a kill. Tier 4 helm drops. I roll a 10. That pretty much set me off for the rest of the night. I was in a terrible mood after that, and I feel terrible about it because one of our tanks got it, so it wasn't a complete loss. Anyway, onto netherspite. First try is always a wipe when people who need to be in beams have never done it before. Second try is a wipe because somebody didn't run far enough away while the dragon was in banish state. I called it then. I wasn't in the mood to wipe twice more before calling it.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results of the raid, despite the less-than-desirable second half and pugs. Hopefully downing prince has gotten the guild out of our slump. We'll see on Wednsday. Continue reading 'Karagain'