Main Entry: trick·le-down death
Function: Noun
: A death that happens slowly, with an intermittent stream of damage that adds up to more damage taken over a period of time than healing received in the same period. Requires a longer time frame to finally kill the tank (more than a few seconds). Trickle-down deaths can be ameliorated with increased mitigation (armor mostly), and avoidance. Common in Icecrown Citadel.

Antonym: The Ulduar Splat

Ominously, Ghostcrawler declared last week in a post:

The threat-related goals still remain:

…

2) Paladin — Nerf the threat capacity of HoR and SoC.

Now, I may have played the chicken little several times in the past and yet we still made out pretty well, generally. Despite two or three dire predictions of imminent nerfs, the worst we got was the Sacred Duty retuning. As for threat, well, that’s a horse of a different color.

Is Paladin threat too good? Generally yes, although not for the reasons that GC and others on the tanking forums would describe. For one, in the one case that Ghostcrawler is correct, Seal of Command was poorly designed and executed, and gave us an easily obtained threat boost that really should have been restricted to Ret Pallies.

SoComm has really only been useful since ShoR was perhaps unintentionally moved to being a melee attack in the early days of 3.3. Before then we procced the effect much less, to the point where it was useless for tanking. Post-ShoR change and suddenly the fastest and easiest way to pumped out the AOE teeps (like deeps, but moar threatnin’) was to switch to Seal of Command and go nuts on any clumbs of mobs in your path.

As for Hammer of the Righteous, is it really that overpowered? Really?

I would say no, but perhaps I’m biased. I see little difference between it and the Warrior cleave aside from the fact that ours hits an additional target (but has a cooldown) and automatically pierces armor thanks to the damage being of the Holy school.

Side thought: if HotR was so overpowered (and this is something GC has been hinting that he feels for some time) then why, oh why, does the Paladin t10 2pc bonus increase its damage by 20%?

They tried to tinker with HotR in the past, around the time of the 3.2 ptr, briefly shifting its damage to physical. This made HotR not only hit for less (now being mitigated by armor) but also do less threat thanks to not gaining the Righteous Fury +threat to Holy spells. They played around with changing how much damage the attack did, and then baking in a +threat modfier, but eventually decided to just revert the change and leave it as is. Kicking the ball down the road, I suppose.

I wonder if this change is now on the table again.

In the end what it comes to down is, yes, we are gods of AOE threat, and that must be changed with us being adjusted down. How would I prefer this be done? For starters, make SoComm require a 2H weapon and make it the exclusive domain of Ret Pallies. Otherwise, if the intention is to let Prot keep it, adjust down how much damage the cleave does (though this will disproportionately hurt the Rets).

… Although, I do enjoy the irony of Rets taking a nerf on the chin because of us. Usually it’s the other way around!

Er, but I digress. The other recommendation is: wait and see how our AOE threat is outside of Icecrown. I strongly suspect that our AOE threat is being exaggerated, so to say, but the added damage of the Glyph of Sense Undead, Crusade’s 3% bonus, and the addition of Holy Wrath to our arsenal.

I suppose I could live with Hammer of the Righteous getting pared down, but I’d prefer that be last resort. I love that skill as is. And I’ve finally gotten over that awful CLANG noise it makes.

The only remaining question is this: is the nerf going to come pre-Cataclysm (and if so, why is it not on the PTR yet?) or will they just roll it into 4.0?

You know, I never saw this as an issue before this post by Cranky Healer opened my eyes, but my guild’s raid invites system sucks. We’re in the second grouping, the “show up and maybe you’ll get an invite” sort of guild. Which worked for a while, but there are several structural deficiencies with such a system that I think have been partly causing our attendance troubles.

For one, we have no idea if a raid will be good to go until about 10 minutes before start time when everyone is logged on. Moreover, while people who come to every raid can reasonably assume they’ll have an invite, those that seldom get taken along tend to just assume they won’t be invited and don’t bother to show up and be available for raid. Lastly, the “surprise” nature of invites makes it hard to reasonably rotate people so that we have an ideal distribution of folks seeing the content and getting the gear.

The new system that we’re adopting next week is based on Cranky Healer’s guild’s system. It’ll work like this:

1. All 25man raids go up on the calendar one month ahead of time
2. Everyone is to go through and sign up for every raid they can make.
3. The Sunday before the first night of the raid week (ie, Tuesday), Demo and I will go through the sign up list and mark 25 people as confirmed and 5 as standby.
4. Both “Confirmed” and “Stand By” are expected to show up, with the folks on stand by getting 100% of the dkp earned that night as compensation for being on and available for the duration of the raid.

Ideally no one will be on stand by for two weeks in a row. There’ll be some rotation to get some new faces in every week so we have a larger core of geared people ready to fill spots.

I think this new system will do a lot of good in encouraging wider participation and attendance.

Tonight is farm night so I’m sure attendance will be fine. The real test will be how progression night looks next week after I implement this.

So you’ve got a non-blue gem slot, and you’re starting to think of options. You could just put a Solid Majestic Zircon in there, or perhaps the socket bonus is worth it? Well, for yellow sockets, the only survivability choice is an Enduring, but the piddling avoidance that you get from the defense hardly makes up for any stamina lost from not just slapping a Solid in there. For red slots, I concur with Honors, you want a Shifting in there.

But, you might ask, what about a Nightmare Tear? It’s +10 to all stats, how does that stack up?

Against an Enduring you’d lose .08% parry, block, and miss and 5 stamina and gain 22 armor, a nominal amount of crit, .1% dodge, some block value and dps from the strength, and a wide smattering of stats that don’t really enter into the equation (intellect, spirit, etc.).

Worth it? Using the commonly accepted armor:stam ratio of 11:1, you’re losing out on survivability ultimately equipping a Nightmare Tear instead of an Enduring.

Against a Shifting you’d lose 5 stamina, and gain the block value and dps of the 10 strength, plus all the useless stats. Derivatives of agility stay the same. Again, this is not a worthwhile trade off.

So, ultimately, no you should not gem anything with a Nightmare Tear unless it’s purely a threat pieces and you really want the extra damage that that strength can give you. In all possibilities you’re sacrificing effective health for threat stats.

I don’t think I’ve yet to see a tank with a Nightmare Tear socketed, but this was interesting to work out as a thought exercise.

Spoketh the crab:

It’s too early for us to have a ton of confidence in how this will play out, but I suspect it will more likely be something like [defensive stance, bear form, frost presence reduce crit chance by 6%] than talents or mastery.

Paladins would use Righteous Fury.

This works even better if resilience does not reduce crit chance. :)

So, how would this work exactly? There’s a lot of churning in that thread, because many are assuming that RF would stay as is and just have the crit chance reduction tacked on. Obviously that’s not how it’ll play out in Cataclysm because then Holy or Ret could use it as well.

Rather I expect to see RF get a damage and healing penalty added on to it if this is true and just the simple application of RF makes one crit immune. Which in turn would make a rudimentary stance system for Paladins.

Let’s not do half-measures though, GC, let’s go whole hog. Cataclysm is the perfect opportunity.

What do you all think about this development?

Lovely Charms are somewhat of a rare commodity–going for huge chunks of gold on the auction house (as bracelets), and being divvied up sparingly by various miserly mobs. For the achievement alone I needed 120 of these random drops, and was looking for the quickest, least painful way to get them.

I first tried Ulduar on Tuesday, but apparently Blizz moved exceptionally fast and hotfixed that tactic (along with any other mobs you kill with a vehicle). I put out some feelers for a spot with lots of meleeing, aoe-able creatures. A guildie offered up a spot suggestion: by the Avatar of Freya in Sholazar Basin.

I cannot agree enough, that spot was amazing. The Bonescythe Scavengers constantly respawn and keep coming. They’re short-lived, melee only, and drop decent silver/cloth. Over the course of twenty minutes I farmed up 50 charms.

I was killing them so fast that I barely had time to loot before another wave spawned.

Where have you been farming these items? Have any better spots?

There has been an absolutely bile-inducing amount of crap directed at Paladin tanks in recent weeks. It’s gotten to the point where it’s nearly impossible to visit the official tanking forums, let alone the general forums, for fear of being swept away by a tide of QQ and the tantrums of the inconsolable whiners that populate that den of scum and villainy.

The topic du jour is once again tankadin hate, which was on the decline for a while after so many got it out of their system following the debut of Ardent Defender back in the days of Ulduar. At right about the time that DKs were smacked down, Paladins were propped up and for the first time in our long tanking careers we became something akin to the Second Coming. Or something like that. So I’m told.

We also got a nice fat target painted on our backs to go along with AD.

And now as part of the current flow of anti-Paladin sentiment the same old daggers are being drawn, dull as they are. Paladin tanking is so simplistic that only idiots play them. Paladin tanking is easy mode. Paladin tanking requires no skill. So on and so forth.

I mean, it’s obvious that these indictments are derived by the groupthink rage and envy at what is perceived as the top dog tank. Personally, I question how Druids get away unscathed with an even simpler rotation and far greater effective health, but I suppose that neither here not there. I don’t think there’s any merit to channeling dissatisfaction with your class into a hateful broadside against people that are, generally, on the same team. So to speak.

So then these footsoldiers of the aggrieved masses then fan out across the forums and abroad and denigrate us as degenerate facerollers. As evidence they cite how easy it is for us to aoe tank, how our rotation could be (wrongly) mapped to two buttons, and how our automatic second “cooldown” is a crime against nature. They then go roll Paladin alts (because, truly, the world needs more FotMers) and only reinforce their bigotry with the knowledge that a class–whose tanking arsenal was foundationally designed in 2.0 around reflective and area of effect damage–excels at holding more than one mob at a time.

… Holy hell, how did this get past the Sam Spades of the official forums for so long?!

And then of course one of these little pukes comes to this blog and regurgitates the same, tired claptrap that we’re subjected to day in and day out, spices it up with the mellifluousness of a subliterate mouth-breather, and then has the gall to top it off with a winking emoticon, like that somehow turns his bilious dribble into some biting riposte.

Does it bother me, to have to deal with this nonsense from anonymous troll and guildmate alike? Yeah, it does. For once we’re at the top of the heap, legitimately or not, and dammit that cannot stand. Pitchforks in hand, the wailing masses call for our heads, like we personally were the ones that decided that Paladins were due their time in the sun.

Do we need to be balanced against other tanks? Self-evidently, yes. Do we need this garbage hurled at us on a daily basis? No.

I’m sick of it. You seething wretches need to grow the hell up.

Recently, Ghostcrawler had this to say in a threat about warrior complaints:

Long-term, the paladin manner of generating AE damage and threat is probably too good, especially given how simple it is. To be honest, we have very mixed feelings on the whole AE tanking game. We brought the druid and warrior more in line with the paladin for fear of recreating the Shattered Halls / Mount Hyjal experience, where other tanks just weren’t competitive. What that has led to of course is the AE tank + AE style of damage for almost every pull. You need the tools to be able to tank legitimate adds fights (imagine lots of incoming mobs), but does that mean every pull needs to devolve into that? We’d like to see less AE overall, so buffing everyone’s AE tools isn’t going to be tops on our agenda. That does however mean that we really can’t afford to have a “best AE tank”, and while things are more fair there than they were in BC, they aren’t fair enough.

I don’t think this means we’re going to get nerfed any time soon. I’ll explain why.

Here’s the problem with decrying the OPness of Paladin AoE: the sample is wrong. You can’t wait us tank the mobs before Marrowgar and assume that that’s the rule rather than the exception.

In that room I get to use Holy Wrath and benefit from additional damage multipliers from Glyph of Sense Undead and Crusade. On top of Seal of Command cleaving like nuts, of course our AoE damage is going to be ridiculous. It’s a fait accompli.

Line us up in a room full of evil monkeys or some mob type other than Undead/Demon and you’re going to see a different picture of Pally tanking.

Also, the fact can’t be ignored that Paladins were initially designed to be the best AoE tank, because generally that’s all we could do in Burning Crusade. Only in Wrath was it decided to bring other tanks up to our level, but not to concurrently re-evaluate Pally AoE prowess against the other tank classes. A classic oversight by Blizz.

My point being, Paladin AoE is only “overpowered” due to the situations we’re being observed tanking in. I posit we’d be much less effective in a dungeon crammed with non-Undead/Demon mobs. Still the best AoEer, sure, but not some godly tank that could hold a sweeping horde against all comers.

And every time Consecrate is assumed to be the end-all, be-all of our AoE arsenal I have to chuckle. This isn’t TBC, CC doesn’t stand for Constant Consecration anymore. We can’t just drop that golden puddle and make all the mobs stick to us like glue. What makes us such amazing AoE tanks are all the tools at our disposal: HotR, Seal of Command, Holy Wrath, Holy Shield, Retribution Aura, and Consecrate.

Now as to the reason behind GC’s aside regarding our tanking style, he’s probably foreshadowing a design decision that’ll come to bear in Cataclysm. They’re probably going to move away from raids at least, and maybe heroics, being complete AoE fests. Maybe with 75% AoE damage reductions across the board like Blessing of Kings suggested.

I wouldn’t worry about a nerf any time soon. Between the piddling warrior buffs (I use the term lightly) and the reluctance to fix DK survivability, GC has demonstrated time and time again they’re happy to leave tanks as is as long as that mythical “replacement” situation doesn’t occur.

AoE tanking is just another ball kicked down the road.

Low point

On Saturday I was struck with the desire to bring my lvl 65 hunter (my very first WoW character, rolled the day after the game was released) out and try to finally get him going again. I bought 145 emblems worth of heirloom items, paid for normal flying, and then tried to figure out how to play a hunter again. I lost interest immediately.

High point

Rolled a new warlock instead–yes, this is on top of my other alts: the 42 druid, the 41 shaman, the 48 mage, the 80 DK–I have Alt-ADHD.

Spent the better part of yesterday leveling it with Cendra’s new rogue. Was pretty fun, and I love all the spells it has at such a low level. I’ll probably play it until 40 or so and then get bored.

Low point

Saturday I threw together a somewhat impromptu Undying run. Razuvious was the raid weekly this week, so turns out half the people invited were saved already. Finally decide we’ll just 8 man it, everyone’s pumped for a fun drunk raid, and we go to do Razuvious first. While manning one of the Understudies, my pet frame was turned off and I couldn’t drop mine in time to save Zilga’s from dying. I pick Raz back up, we’re doing good, last 10% of health. Then I lose aggro, Razuvious runs over and instagibs a poor warlock and then before we can all flee to reset, the boss dies. I screwed up Undying on the first boss.

High point

Went and did ToGC-10 instead, finished it with 48 attempts left. Got a few upgrades for the warlock, who I hope will start raiding soon. One for the win column, overall.

Low point

After that tried a late ICC-10 alt run. Never got past Marrowgar because people couldn’t switch to spikes or avoid dying in the fire.

High point

No one got saved to a fail run.

Low point

Didn’t kill Putricide last night in ICC-10 (mains run).

High point

On our best attempt we got him to 26% and there was a marked improvement every attempt that didn’t have some crazy RNG screw up early on (ie, every “real attempt”). We definitely could have killed him with a lot more time.

Also, as you might have guessed, we killed Roface on 10man for the first time. We had a third healer in the group switch to actual heals for the fight and it reduced a lot of the “one healer dead = wipe” issues we had last week. Our first try we wiped at 7%, second at 1%, third a clean kill with no deaths. Was a thing of beauty.

Low point

Went into an AV yesterday to drop a Great Feast and score my Dinner Impossible achievement. Someone asks if there’s a tank and some tool responds he can tank it. Another guy says “Rhidach has 51.1k” (no wasn’t me) and the tool retorts “I’ll out threat him and live longer.” I kept trying to type in /raid a witty riposte (“Oh ho ho, so you think …”) but I failed to realize that you use /bg to talk in the battleground raid channel. I lose my chance to salvage my ego.

High point

I haunted him the whole way to Vann where he pulled and after a few seconds I pulled aggro by out tpsing him. He taunted back, the healers didn’t have enough time to react, and he died. And I lol’d. Oh, how I lol’d.