VP gear is a little different this time around. With tier being raid-only, all slots have some kind of VP offset piece you can purchase. Some are good, some are bad, many are crap. To help decide, here’s a list of everything broken down with their CTC values. Pieces with threat stats were assumed to be reforged to the best choice, and pieces with dodge and parry had the higher value reforged to mastery. Gem sockets are listed, but I didn’t include them in the calculations.

• Chestplate of the Unshakeable Titan (3.08%) [2]
• Gauntlets of Feathery Blows (1.83%) [1]
• Stoutheart Talisman (1.90%) [1]
• Bladeshatter Treads (3.05%) [2]
• Jaw of Repudiation (4.00%) [2]
• Forgesmelter Waistplate (4.07%) [2]
• Bracers of Unrelenting Excellence (2.49%) [0]
• Guardspike Choker (3.21%) [0]
• Indefatigable Greatcloak (2.20%) [1]
• Signet of the Resolute (2.35%) [1]
• Fire of the Deep (5.75%) [0]

Personally, my pick order will probably be:

1. Stoutheart Talisman
2. Bladeshatter Treads
3. Signet of the Resolute
4. Guardspike Choker
5. Foresmelter Waistplate
6. Chestplate of Unshakable Titans

And the rest are crap, except for the trinket which could be situationally useful. (Side note: all the socket bonuses are +avoidance! Ugh.)

I worked out the numbers of what CTC and stamina my current pieces give and compared that to the new VP pieces. The pick order I chose is based on what are the biggest upgrades for me (though bottom of the list is mostly stamina upgrades). Your mileage may vary, and I expect this to change based on what upgrades I get in Dragon Soul.

If I had to describe this raid week in three words, it’d be “short but sweet”. And yes, I arbitrarily chose three words so I could use that phrase.

Last week was a pretty big disappointment with us failing to secure a follow-up kill on Heroic Majordomo Staghelm after spending most of the second night working on him. We got close so many times, at least four wipes around 1-4% health, and definitely two that were in the decimal percents. It was rough.

As a result, the goal this week was not to repeat that travesty. And on top of that, this week marked the end of Zilga’s tenure as raid leader as she prepared to step down from raid leading entirely to attend to her proceeding maternity. In her place Antigen and I would begin swapping off on raid leading duties. I was taking this week, so I used the opportunity to make one major change to the strategy.

This time, I’d give a 2 seconds warning before Leaping Flames were to occur, ensuring that everyone was moving, and hopefully preventing any damage from the “standing in bad” ticks as people would clear puddles immediately, rather than being stuck in them for a second or two.

I mean, it wasn’t as good as people just — perish the thought — looking at their screen and seeing if the cat was headed their way. But, if you’re going to smash tunnel visioning into tiny kibbles, baby steps are required. This would do.

We managed to kill Domo on the third attempt, with the first two attempts ending ignominiously but hopefully. The movement change definitely worked, as the first orbs phase went flawlessly. Didn’t even need a battle rez, in stark contrast to preceding weeks. The second orb phase was a little stacked against us. North side had two orbs right next to each other, the south had three. RNG strikes again.

Still, ranged handled them pretty well, only getting overwhelmed at the very end, right before they despawned. I called for the collapse, we switched it to Scorp, and then attempted to shave off the last 6% of his health before the enrage 30 seconds later. We easily pulled it off, marking our cleanest kill yet. And, more importantly, proving we can easily steamroll the fight — “farm!” the Rogue called out — and thus devote a lot more time in the second night to Heroic Alysrazor.

On top of the great progress we had on Alys on Tuesday, that portends an imminent kill.

Of course, the shoulder token I wanted did not drop. With my occupying the top of the PR chart, that was bound to happen. Fate refuses to allow me to have peace, no sir. On the bright side, Sulfuras didn’t drop off Rag for Antigen as well, so I’m firmly convinced at this point that we’re locked in some kind of death pact where neither can get our desired gear until the other does, and then when we finally do we’ll get run over by a bus the following morning, at the exact same moment.

Yes, these are the weird things I think about ever since I started raid leading again. Coincidence? I think not.

Sidenote

I’m trying to make a point of blogging more often, and one of the ways I plan to do that is removing the laziness concurrent with forcing out a huge post regularly through the clever deployment of microblogging. Basically, posts like that erroneous stub I spit out last night. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do substantive posts, but if I catch a small little thing, or see an interesting and pertinent video or quote, I’ll throw it up all-tweet-like on the blog.

I’ve been slacking a lot over the past few months because pounding out 200 words or so for a PTR patch note felt like a titanic requirement. This should remove that malaise from the equation a bit. Apologies in advance if this comes across as me half-assing! I assure you the entirety of my ass is involved in everything I do.

Just a quick post to digest anything pertinent to our beloved spec!

The new talents system

Firstly, when they were gave prot paladins as the example for the new system in the WoW Preview Panel, they gave a quick list of what abilities we’d receive automatically as a result of our spec. No surprises here, except that retribution will have Hammer of the Righteous too.

(Apologies to mmo-champ for stealing their screenshots.)

As for the actual talents they offered for prot paladins later in the talent panel, I played with the wowhead calculator a little bit and settled on this spec. There’s not much reason to go terribly in depth, since these will likely all change before we even reach beta, but to briefly bob and weave through the six tiers …

Tier 1 – Level 15

First of all: HALLELUJAH — a gap closer at last! During the preview panel when they mentioned how the new talents would include a helpful amount of utility enhancements, I immediately thought that this could feasibly lead to the long-deferred dream of a tankadin gap closer to be fulfilled. So imagine my joy when that first screenshot came up on the screen showing an overview of paladin talents and the first tier was the three movement-enhancing talents in our current trees.

But I digress! Speed of Light is the obvious choice here. The fastest speed combined with a short cooldown makes it the most useful of the three choices. You’re not going to be constantly zipping around, so you want that burst of speed to mean the most it can when you choose to use it.

Tier 2 – Level 30

The stun is the only real choice I see here. CC is nice, but it has a cast time, and that’s not the kind of thing you’ll want to be playing with in combat. And, likewise, there are plenty of other CCs available. As for Seal of Justice, total PVP choice.

Tier 3 – Level 45

This is a wonderful tier, but despite the temptations of the first two, hands-down nothing can beat a cheat death.

Tier 4 – Level 60

Don’t make the mistake I first did when I saw this, the wording “friendly target” also includes the player (see Word of Glory, for example; same verbiage) so Holy Shield was be self-usable. It’s the only real survivability choice. Eternal Glory remains lackluster, and Selfless Healer focuses itself on a heal with a cast time, something we won’t be dirtying ourselves with.

Tier 5 – Level 75

Clemency seems like the best choice. The ability to get two BoPs out, for example, feels pretty powerful. Reduced cooldowns are boring, by comparison. Being able to choose the end of the cooldown will always be more powerful. Veneration likewise feels like a PVP talent, but you never know if a PVE fight may require switching to it if there’s some kind of raid-wide slowing debuff, or something of that ilk. You never know.

Tier 6 – Level 90

Holy Avenger gives us a burst of survivability: the ability to cast WoG/Holy Shield 6 times in a row — especially if WoG’s cooldown disappears in 5.0. That’s incredibly powerful, especially when choice of timing is the name of the game.

All in all, I know it’s stupid to dig through these when they are nowhere near final. But I love the new system, I’m very excited about it. For the same reason I enjoy flipping around my major glyphs fight to fight, I love the possibility of customizing my talents depending on the needs of the encounter. I really hope they stick with this to the end. (Not the numbers, mind you, the big picture framework.)

Sidenote: I think it’s cute that Blizzard is aiming for this new system to kill cookie-cutter builds. The truth of the matter is, if numbers are included on a talent, you’ll be able to crunch our its survivability value. We’re going to have a list of proper talents for each encounter, there’s no way around it.

The return of Blinding Shield?

At the class Q&A, Ghostcrawler imparted that Blinding Shield (originally a new spell for Paladins in Cataclysm, but later removed) is penciled in as the level 87 spell. As he went on to disclaim, that could very likely change, so don’t consider it remotely set in stone.

Hope burns eternal

I would love to see an orange shield.

- Ghostcrawler, when the panel was asked about a tanking legendary

Cosmetic librams soon?

When talking about hunter quivers, the panelists also brought up librams as a similar cosmetic option for paladins. I wonder if they’ll turn the soon-to-be deprecated ranged slot into a “cosmetic item slot”. You equip a libram, or a totem, or quiver, or whatever and it appears slung to an appropriate spot on your character. It’s something I’ve wanted to see since Burning Crusade, so here’s hoping we see that in MoP.

What we didn’t hear about

On Thursday, Miri texted me to let me know that she asked Ghostcrawler about active mitigation/tank changes during the charity dinner and he said there was not going to be any news about it during BlizzCon. Likewise, as the convention continued we didn’t get a single inkling of any news about the subject. I’m a little disappointed, but as long as it makes it to 5.0, there’s not much of value in worrying about not getting news about an early design iteration.

I am currently posting this from the Dallas airport, waiting for the eventual departure of my flight. I have a long day of travel today — 8 hours and change — but at least it’s almost done!

In any case, I’m very much excited for BlizzCon and especially to see a lot of great friends and folks from my guild, Twitter, and elsewhere in the WoW community. If you want to meet and say hi at any point, hit me up on Twitter and let me know — I’d love the chance to say hi to any readers!

I’ll also be at the WoW Insider Meetup on Thursday and the after-party at the Hilton on Saturday (hooray for being centrally located). And, of course, I’ll be camping out at a lot of the panels this year. And now that I’ve finally ditched my iPhone, I should be able to tweet while inside the Convention building — so I can offer inane commentary on any big reveals as they occur.

Looking forward most especially to some tantalizing details on how active mitigation is going to work, and any other changes we can expect for tankadins in WoW 5.0. Hopefully there’ll be some big news!