Tier 15, Already?

5.2 on the PTR soon.

So this expansion seems to be rolling right along. We have tons of info already on (MMO) about the patch notes and the view of the new Tier armor. I'm not a really big fan of the T15 pally set. It lacks, um...well it lacks, I'll leave it at that, although the yellow looks better than the other two colors.
 To be fair, I'm never a really big fan when I see a picture of them, but live and around town they look much better. Season 13 armor set is viewable too but that is horrid and I won't waste your time linking that.

I'll hit on the highlights for the upcoming info so far:

• We get another faction and quest area. 
• New raid with 12 normal bosses and a heroic only.
• World bosses will spawn faster and we have a new one incoming.
• Warlocks now FINALLY (um, we will see about this) get green flames! Really, its only been around for 4 years but now you can have it too.
• New player models.
• PVP JC only gems.
• Farm changes-  
• Buy the farm - You are able to purchase your farm from Yoon which makes your farm an inn essentially and you will also receive orders to gain rep with the faction that places that order.
• You can purchase a seed bag that allows you to plant 4 at a time. 
• Special crops yield has been increased.
• When you master plow virmen will pop up stunned and at 30% health.
• Wild crops will be LESS!

Paladin changes- (sources)

 Paladin  -

• Hand of Purity now reduces all incoming damage by 10% in addition to its other effects.
• Eternal Flame periodic heal now provides 100% more healing when self-cast.
• Judgment now costs 5% of base mana.
• Protection
  • The base damage of Consecration has been increased by 789%, and it now scales less efficiently with attack power by approximately 11%.

Incoming Nerf and Fixes.

Below is today's big nerf to 4.2 and at the bottom is my response to my comments from my last quote. For some odd reason I can't comment on my own blog...LOL

From MMO-Champion
September 20Firelands

• Hell Hound Rend Flesh damage has been reduced by 25%.
• The damage multiplier granted by energy to Unstable Magma has been reduced by 50%.
• Alysrazor
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Alysrazor now drops 1 additional feather in 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers in 25-player mode in all cycles.
  • The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
  • Alysrazor’s Fiery Tornados now move slower.
• Baleroc
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Baleroc now swings 25% slower while Decimation Blade is active.
  • The duration of Tormented has been reduced on normal difficulty.
• Beth'tilac
  • Beth'tilac's health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Lord Rhyolith
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Druid of the Flame have had their health reduced by 15%, and Sunfire damage reduced by 25% on both difficulties.
  • The health and melee damage of Spirit of the Flame have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty, and reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
• Ragnaros
  • Ragnaros' health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty.
  • Ragnaros' damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Magma Trap damage has been reduced on all difficulties.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty and 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Wrath of Ragnaros now knocks targets up, but not back, on normal difficulty.
• Shannox
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • Riplimb's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Rageface's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Magma Flare damage and Hurl Spear damage have been reduced by 15% on both difficulties.

So here it goes:
Nat and Caly thanks for reading. I agree with you both.
@LM I appreciate you responding and reading the blog, I don't think you read this post fully. If you did, maybe you missed some of my points.
When T12 (FL) hit, VP was not available from the T11 instances. They placed a hot fix later to receive VP. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2795074028?page=4#69
That wasn't really an opinion, it was fact that has been updated and exact quote was:

Removing VP from T11 raids when FL hit.

alluding to the fact that it is NOW there. Sorry if that was perceived wrong in my type.
The next issue you addressed is ilvl, I was NOT saying was the highest ilvl in game. I made a mistake, 378 is from normals and 391 is from heroics. I made a horrible mistake and I'm sorry. Point of that whole paragraph is the guilds that have killed Rags on normal is very low.

Lastly is the nerf to FL being in steps, at the time of the post all the info I had was it would be done:

"by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released."

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3494581#blog

There was no announcement of steps. It said the coming weeks.

I can see where this would be a huge area of concern for people as I got info wrong, I will make adjustments and fix this in the future. In general I do check my facts even on Op-ed type posts.

I hope I made your day better and cleared up some confusion, cuz that is what I'm here for.

The 4.1 Tanking Source!

**This is a repost, I lost the original. I will be fixing the links later.

The 4.1 tanking source!
Whats in a patch....well with 4.1 there is a ton!

I wanted to take some time and put a little list together for the upcoming changes to 4.1 for tanks other notes and gearing for 4.1 as a tank. (Source)

Paladin changes-

The big one, Word of Glory now has a 20 second cool down, making our rotation slightly more static and not allowing us a walking heal any time we need. The ultimate effect will be seen later as 4.2 enters but unless you are doing hard modes, most people are on par gear wise with content and this will get better as ZA and ZG gear start hitting the Org/SW hangers.

Divine Guardian now has a 3 minute cool down. Up from two minutes. Again, non game breaking but still adds periods of AoE damage to us.

Sacred Duty can no proc off Avengers Shield and Judgements....o.O extra damage and threat. Is that a problem at all for anyone?

Minor changes/fixes:

Righteous Fury now lasts thru death, Avengers Shield can NOT be blocked any longer.

Holy can talent into doing away with WoG's 20 second cool down.Walk in the Light is the talent they will be taking I'm sure.

The Rise of the Zandalari (return of ZA and ZG)- Blizz has installed a separate que for these two places and require a ilvl of 346 to enter. (oh how I wish that PVP gear didn't count)

If you follow my blog at all you know I'm really excited about this. I really loved ZA at level 70, it was a true challenge. I guess my only real concern is the fact these won't be run to see the brilliance of the instance or even the challenge that we faced at T5 and below in TBC but they will now be loot pinatas. Yes I said that, the ilvl is going to be lower but now we will see the trade trolls light up on how they are now geared better than XYZ and this now means they are better. I can also see trade /2 LFM for ZA/ZG 356 ilvl, pst!

Gear upgrade for 4.1~
I can't wait to see these place again, so on the topic of gear I'll give my opinion on these pieces.

Head- Spiritshield Mask - Avoidance at best, missing mastery and...Stats we like. It does have the ZA look to it thou.

Neck - Amulet of Protection - Dodge and Mastery, nice survivability in a sorely neglected area.

Shoulder - Pauldrons of Sacrifice - Better than tier unless its your 4pc bonus, on par with the other drops. Nice filler.

Chest - Battleplate of the Amani Empire - Dodge and Exp, the crafted BoE is probably a better choice.

Hands - Bone Plate Handguards - Again, avoidance set maybe. With VP being easier to aquire the T11 set are a better option.

Waist - Coils of Hate - Base stats of the crafted one make it better, the mastery is a tad better. Overall this isn't too bad.

Pants - Added new option.
Shield - Shield of the Blood God - Looks cool. The "added" gem socket for the crafted one still puts this ahead on all charts for me...that's just me thou.

Weapon -Bloodlord's Protector- No mastery, slightly less stats and damage than the raid drops, upgrade dependant with the 346 drop you have.

Overall this isn't bad. Crafted still looks better for most slots even in the non-tanking selections. So far there isn't a ring, trinket or wrist selection. I'm still scratching my head about the pant selection. (source)
Tank Differences:

Death Knight-

Battle Rez for all DK's, costs 50 runic power on CD with other forms of rez's.

Blood shield only works in blood presence.

Death strike's healing doesn't generate threat.

Druids -

Lacerate now increase damage instead of threat.

Swipe (bear) now increase damage done instead of threat gen and is on a 3 second CD instead of 6seconds.

Savage Defense - in essence - Now absorbs damage based on 35% of the attack power of the druid and modified by mastery, lasts 10 seconds and there are no charges.

Warrior - I think Blizz redesigned the entire class, the highlights as I know and understand them.

Rallying Cry - a 20% INCREASE to all members HP's for 10 seconds. 30 yard radius and has a 3 minute CD and...on the same CD as Last stand.

Mastery now allows shield block to an Aura that reduces 20% of magic damage for 6 seconds (talented).

Gag order now lowers the CD of heroic throw by 30 seconds.

There is a ton of other stuff that warriors had changed. Please see patch notes.

The rest of the best -

Flask of Stoneskin now has its stam increase to 450 up from 300.

Guild tabard will now increase your guild rep.

Guild challenges award rep to the guild for completion of the challenge.

There is a now built in Recruitment tool for those looking for a guild and those who are recruiting.

CALL TO ARMS - implemented to lower que wait times. If you que for the role they are looking for you get a bag of goodies that is account bound.

Resurrecting players can now be done with out targeting them. No more corpse hunting.

Blizz's response to Call to Arms!

This should calm the angry mob a bit. The wave of bitching that came from this was probably overwhelming on something Blizz felt was a decent way to try to fix the LFG system. So much so that it sent them scrambling for a fix. This is a step in the right direction, things that fall in the bag will be BOA so you can send them to your main while you pug with an alt.

I honestly don't think this is going to fix the que times or the shortage but it might just slow down the "why do tanks get extra" feeling that was sweeping the Internet.

I do again applaud Blizz for trying to do something with LFD and the backlash I'm sure they felt.

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Source)



We’ve been following discussions and reading feedback on the Dungeon Finder Call to Arms feature, and appreciate everyone’s opinions on the topic. We wanted to share a few items though that supplement the recent announcement:


The additional reward for completing the Dungeon Finder Call to Arms (called the Satchel of Exotic Mysteries) will be Bind on Account; able to be freely sent to other characters on your account once you receive it.


An error existed in the announcement regarding flasks and potions being picked based on your spec. This is not the case. If someone earns a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries, and if it rolls the random chance to provide a potion or flask, it will be a randomly selected. This helps ensure a broad array of available flasks and potions for all characters.


We also wanted to clarify, mounts that have a possibility to be found in a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries are found with the same rarity as if you had slain the dungeon boss that normally drops them.

Valor Point revision in 4.1

It is not official yet but here is what is in the works per this post.
I kind of like this change, what are your thoughts?

Nope. In fact, this is exactly what we're doing in 4.1. :)

Right now, you receive 70 VP for the first random Cataclysm Heroic dungeon you complete each day. In 4.1, you'll receive 70 VP for the first seven random Cataclysm Heroic dungeons you complete each week. Similarly, you'll receive 140 VP for the first seven random Rise of the Zandalari Heroic dungeons (the new Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub instances) you complete in the week, too. Collectively, you'll be able to earn up to 980 VP exclusively from Heroic dungeons, which in turn will count towards your weekly 1250 VP cap.

By transitioning random Heroic dungeon rewards from a daily format to a weekly one, we'll be able to give players more control and flexibility over how they can earn VP -- which is cool! -- but this also means that we've a lot more bookkeeping to do in terms of where those points are coming from. To help with that, we're adding a "Valor Point bar" (similar to an XP bar) to the top of Dungeon Finder UI that will track your weekly cap, as well as how many Heroics you can still run for VP during the week.

We're going to be writing up a pretty big blog about that system since it's somewhat complicated, but here's what you can take away right now:

•In 4.1, running random Heroic dungeons for VP is now something you can do on your own schedule. Feel like spending your entire Saturday queuing up as random? No problem!

•The first seven random Rise of the Zandalari Heroics you run for the week will award 140 VP each. This is double the VP that you’ll receive from your first seven random "tier 1" Cataclysm Heroics, since the dungeons are considered a "step up" in difficulty.

•You'll be able to randomly queue for the Rise of the Zandalari Heroics separately from the tier 1 Cataclysm Heroic dungeons.

•Each week you can earn up to 980 VP just by running random Heroic dungeons. If you want to maximize your VP gains, you can still reach the overall weekly cap of 1250 by defeating raid level content.

This isn't yet on the PTR for testing. We'll let you know when it is, though, and will continue to provide more information as the development of 4.1 progresses.

03/14/2011 11:00 AMPosted by Xmc


Some people don't have time to log in every day, but have, for instance, a lot of time on the weekend to play.


We hear you, and we agree that asking players log in every day (or night) just to keep pace with their VP is a bit unreasonable and can sometimes lead to World of Warcraft feeling less like a game and more like a job. That's ultimately why we're making these changes. We want you to log in because you enjoy raiding, or questing, or -- in this case -- running dungeons, not because you feel like you need to complete a specific chore every day in order to stay viable/competitive.

A Hallowed time

I'm not a huge Achievement person. Sure if they come my way I'm ok with it but very rarely do I go looking for one. Recently I've been so bored I've been doing the holiday events. I opted out of brewfest but did get Flamekeeper at the end of this summer.

For some reason thou, my favorite event is Halloween. Maybe because my pally came into her own at the end of TBC and that was the event or maybe because the boss has such an awesome voice track. The first year I let everyone else in my small guild get the mount when we did it. I wasn't always interested in mounts. I really like the mount and this year I've been doing it every day for the mount. I did get one on my hunter who I never play any longer.

Since I have been doing the boss every day I figured for the extra gold I'd go out and do the meta... well I've been doing this for three years now. THREE YEARS! and this morning I got-

Here was the hold up [Hallowed Helm], yes this cardboard helm that everyone of my toons had, one of my alts had four of them. I was so frustrated by the RNG bug. I've had run ins with RNG before but this is a once a year thing. Beside for THREE years I've been running this boss and oh my I didn't have this drop on the only toon I cared about it for. This morning I logged on and bingo:

Happenings~

With the holiday thing going on and my uncertainty with my current guild (more on that later) I haven't been playing much as a tank or anything other than trick o treating. I did run a ton w/an alt to get BOA gear at its inflated price and in my last post you can see some of the things I went thru so I kinda backed off on doing randoms and just did my HH daily. In other words my main was my main for a bit. I played her alot lately.

I bought a few mounts [Red Drake] and [Cenarion War Hippogryph] from the vendors. Yes not the smartest thing before the release of Cata but I have 310% speed so all the mounts fly the same and I can ride some mounts I've always wanted to at nice speeds.

Tanking~

I raided! Yep, sure did. I made the time to get in there with my guild. I had been on late and had lots of little tells to come raid again. I haven't been for RL bit me in the behind. School was killing me and family stuff had me busy. We spent a night wiping on Heroic Prof Puteface. Not a fight I've ever really enjoyed on normal. We made great progress and wanted to hold over, but I'm sure like most guilds in the world, we have issues with people showing up.

Today we went in and ripped the first few bosses apart, I got to kite on Rotface and do the orb duty on the princes. I was almost a tank again. But I do want to say being away from the raids for as long as I have I felt rust! big time rust. Aggro wasn't bad but other tanks were pulling from me just due to muscle memory. I also had a real fun experience on Heroic Marrowgar, I was out front in aggro and we did our lil L-L-R movement and my bar wasn't locked....LOL I was missing AS, judgement and CS was now in a different spot. Bone storm was a scramble for me to get the bar set up and locked before I had to move to much. That was fun!!!

Upcoming cata rotation thoughts.

Overcomplicated?
I'm not on beta, I don't have the invite and with my real life I don't have the time. I do hit up my favorite sites and see what the people who are on beta are saying. I see for the most part a very complex and bulky to say the least rotation. I also think the warrior and paladin are starting to mirror each other way too much. I jumped on to MMO-Champ today and see what I think is a streamline of our talents and rotation. I hope you all have a minute to check it out here. I do want to highlight some of it for you. Thank you to mmo champ for their work they do. While I do read blue posts and the tanking forums its hard to sort thru some of the trolling.

New build that is in the works.

Shield of the Righteous -- Now consumes Holy Power to cause damage.

Holy Shield -- Now a passive ability that causes your Shield of the Righteous to provide 5% block per stack of Holy Power consumed. In other words, you never click Holy Shield. You just click Shield of the Righteous and buff yourself.

Yay! SotR is coming back in! and in a good way. I do wonder if we are only getting 5% block now with this and a passive 10% but this was alot better than what was going on with the removal and our only usage of the new "holy power" ability that wasn't my favorite thing. I think using an offensive ability to create a def mechanic is really a novel thing. I hope this stays.

Hammer of the Righteous -- Now generates Holy Power but shares a cooldown with Crusader Strike. Almost all talents that affect one or the other will affect both. The intention is you use Crusader Strike -> Shield of the Righteous for single target and Hammer of the Righteous -> Shield of the Righteous for multitarget.
Avenger's Shield -- No real change, but it still hits pretty hard. Both CS and HotR can proc Grand Crusader to lower the Avenger's Shield cooldown.

Let me just clarify something - Hammer of the Righteous will generate 1 Holy Power per cast, or 1 Holy Power per target hit?
One per cast. Otherwise we think paladins might want to always be hitting multiple targets, like "Let me tank the boss and one of the adds or my Holy Power generation will be low."

So now CS and HotR share a CD and create holy power? Could it be that the dev's are getting it now? We have a multi and single target attack, a choice of what to use while attacking (and maybe we will have to plan ahead on burning this CD for what is coming at us) and the chance that either of these will shorten the CD of shield throw. This really sounds like a rotation that is on the right track.

Vindication -- can be caused only by Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous.
Holy Wrath -- With the above changes, we think Prot paladins have enough rotational buttons to hit, so we are downplaying Holy Wrath. Holy Wrath is really intended as a Ret filler spell (for when other attacks are on cooldown). Prot could technically use Holy Wrath, but we aren't providing any talent hooks.

Is Holy Wrath going to have the same model it currently has? As a split damage ability?

Yeah, we like the split damage because it lets Ret (and Prot if needed) use it in most situations.

Seems fair to me. It takes out of the warriors mold and still in a way allows us to not uses holy wrath every time we want to apply vindication. My concern, what becomes of holy wrath? does it go back to the old version that only is usable on undead or does it get set to the back burner due to its high mana cost (guessing on that) and another way to attack that causes more threat? I see holy wrath getting changed if the rotation that looks to be coming out stays the same or falling out of use completely for prot.

Consecration -- Now on a 10 sec duration with a 30 sec cooldown. The Hallowed Ground talent makes it cheaper and hit harder -- it does not affect duration. Use Consecration when you need it, but you can't spam it. This is consistent with the AE changes we are making to all tanks.

I was never a spammer of conc, even in TBC when it was one of the best threat spells we had. To me this is a welcome change. Maybe tank won't "rely" on conc to be a primary attack. I wonder what the new build is going to look like, but does this change make it a must have talent point due to the "cheaper and harder hitting"? I like this.

Maybe people who understand and play paladins at Blizz are now working on the rotation for us! That would be a nice change. I really like the looks of these two rotations. Its not a face roll and seems we can weave in other things besides whats posted above.

With these changes in mind, Prot will be thinking about buttons such as these:
Single Target: Judgement, Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield.
Multi-target: Judgement, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield, possibly Exorcism.
None of this includes things like Seals, Inquisition, defensive cooldowns, Word of Glory, etc.

So with Vindication off of Holy Wrath, is it intended that Prot Paladins are the only tank without an AoE Physical Damage debuff, or will similar changes be made to the Warrior/Druid/DK mechanics?



Hammer of the Righteous will be AoE enough. It hits many targets. It may not be as widespread as Demo Shout on a pull like a jillion Onyxia Whelps, but we don't really expect you to debuff pulls of that size.

 
This speaks for itself.


Summary...
To me it looks like we are starting to get our own identity, keeping some really cool abilities (or have them put back in) and maybe Blizz is starting to get a handle on our rotation. I really like this build, I hope they stay with something like this and make it better.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well.