The NDA was lifted, Beta has opened, and two Prot Pally changes have already slipped through the net.

First, Blessing of Sanctuary is just “Sanctuary” now. We no longer have a cast a separate blessing on ourselves, the actions of Sanc are now baseline. This is in-tune with blessings in general being streamlined–ie, might and wisdom combining to just Blessing of Might.

The other big thing you might have noticed is the change to the Holy Shield talent. At the moment, it’s poorly worded, because the description easily misconstrues itself as saying that our 6% crit reduction is only active when Holy Shield is active.

Thankfully, as Ghostcrawler has illuminated, this is not the case.

The crit immunity is a permanent passive for spec’ing that deep into the tree.

Also, I think the Wowhead tooltip is wrong. What I’ve seen is Holy Shield only increases chance to block by 5% now, rather than 30%. For what it’s worth.

Of course, the Prot tree is no where near finalized. This is all very much subject to changing. Including what talent gives us the crit reduction.

Hold onto your hats.

Edit: Suicidal Zebra has a great roundup of changes thus far.

Count me among the many that were disappointed by the announcement that the Path of the Titans was being scrapped for Cataclysm. I understand that they may have been unhappy with the iteration, and honestly the system had the probability of being ultimately very unwieldy, but the potential of PotT was so huge that I think it was worth the fighting for. There was something majestic about an ancillary system of customizing your character, where we could bask in an extra level of min/maxing. I rue that we’ve been robbed of that.

In the place of PotT, we’ll have medium glyphs. What are medium glyphs?

Medium glyphs are the kind of glyph you’d take if you had more choices.

The example they gave was cooldown glyphs for Fury Warriors. So in that example, major glyphs are the ones that directly affect dps, while the medium glyphs are the ones that are a little weaker that you would understandably avoid.

Also, please change that name. “Medium glyphs” is just about the laziest name they could have given to this feature. I’m sure it’s not final, but, gawd… terrible name. Even for a stand-in.

But I digress. Let’s think about what would constitute a medium glyph for Prot Pallies. Following the definition about the first tier/second tier preferences, I suppose one glyph that immediately jumps to mind as the kind that would be a medium is the Glyph of Salvation. It’s not something we’d take first-string because it’s pretty situation (ok, very situational), but it’d be nice to have full-time. Another glyph that I would love to have, but generally stick with improving threat over it is the Glyph of Righteous Defense.

Thought exercises aside, this discussion is pretty moot because (I think it’s safe to say) the whole stable of glyphs is probably getting seriously revamped. Or the abilities they currently modify are being changed, like taunts maybe going onto the melee hit table. We’ll have new glyphs for new abilities, new ones for old abilities, we’ll see the removal of crappy glyphs, and maybe the redesigning of some standbys. No point in getting too deep down into this at the moment.

And lastly, since we’re talking about glyphs, I’m pretty happy with the decision to let us “remember” glyphs we’ve used and swap them in as we will. This would be pretty handy for a situation like when my guild was learning Heroic Anub 10 back in the day and the Glyph of Holy Wrath was pretty helpful for the adds, so every night we’d do that fight I’d slip in a Glyph of Holy Wrath. Then once the night was over I’d put the Judgement glyph back in. Invariably I ended up with a stack of each Glyph, which I remember costing a bunch.

Hopefully Blizzard will work out some system that scratches that “alternate leveling” itch we all have. Being five levels short with nothing extra to show for it now is pretty lame.

Warning: This is a Cataclysm spoiler.

Back in May I asked a simple question: if our Mastery is increased block chance, then wouldn’t Mastery rating be the exact same thing as block rating? At the time it seemed like the answer was indeed yes, and that we’d have a horrendously redundant Mastery.

Of course, like I said at the time, things could very well change–and now it seems like they have.

According to a Ghostcrawler post from the Alpha forums leaked onto a site that promulgates Cataclysm leaks, there will be no block rating in the next expansion pack. As he says,

You may notice there are no items with block rating. If we want shield-using tanks to get block, we add mastery to the item.

Well, that settles that, eh?

In our class preview last month we were told that our third mastery would mean that “the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.” The assumption among many quarters was this meant we’d have a higher-than-normal damage absorption rate from blocks. That is, a warrior would block for 30% and sometimes 60% (if critting) while we would block for, say, a steady 40%.

Turns out that was not the case. According to the datamined Alpha Mastery values, our third mastery definitively increases our block chance. This corroborates what was datamined by MMO-Champ, which I mentioned in my last post on the subject.

The Mastery values are pretty interesting. It appears that with 51 points in a tree we’ll be gaining 8.01% damage reduction, the Vengeance effect, and a 16% additional base block chance. Putting aside that Mastery and Block Rating is the same stat for us right now, 16% is a pretty major number when each block is a straight percentage of damage reduction.

Overall though, it’s interesting to see a disconnect between what Blizz said they would do in our class preview and what reality has so far turned out to be. I wonder if anything else from the preview is… off.

All standard “this is subject to change” disclaimers apply, but here’s some food for thought of how things stand right now in the Alpha.

We have one stat which will be featured on tanking gear called Block Rating. This will increase our chance to block, and when a block occurs a flat 30% damage reduction will occur. We increase this stat through gear with Block Rating.

There is also a stat called Mastery that we’ll we accumulating. According to the Class Preview, Mastery will affect “block amount”. Blizz clarified this by noting the thematic difference between Warriors and Paladins, as the former blocks for more reduction, and the latter blocks more often.

That’s all well and good, but if you look at the Alpha spells they say our third Mastery is “Increases your chance to block melee attacks.” And, more succintly, “Block chance %”.

So–and maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit here–but doesn’t it seem that Block and Mastery are the same stat?

I know it’s early, and like I disclaimed earlier, everything is subject to change, but hopefully they’re planning to change this. Having two stats do the same thing makes Mastery beyond boring for us, plus will eventually lead to a point where we will likely have “too much” block and have to get nerfed accordingly. Likewise, we could be the only spec with a cap of some sort on the value of our Mastery. That’s not cool.

I’m sure this will change. Right now though, I am filled with trepidation.

I spotted these on Maintankadin, and figured I’d share.

Resistance Aura — Gives 31 additional Fire, Frost and Shadow resistance to all party and raid members within 40 yards. Players may only have one Aura on them per Paladin at any one time.

Makes sense to consolidate all the resistance auras into one. There seems to be some heavy buff stacking going on in Cata.

Blessing of Might — Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing attack power by 11% and restoring 2 mana every 5 seconds for 1 hour. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Blessing of Kings — Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing strength, agility, stamina, and intellect by 6% for 1 hour. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

We knew these were coming, but, most importantly: “If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected“. YES. Do want.

The Cataclysm Alpha was leaked to the internet and now screenshots and datamined info galore is spilling into the community.

Unfortunately not much about Paladins is yet known. I checked mmo-champ’s talent calculator for our class and the only talent change I could see was Crusader Strike is now gone from the Ret tree and in its place is a talent (Improved Crusader Strike) that increases damage of that attack by 10%. I thought we were getting rid of +% talents?

The one very interesting thing leaked so far are the stat values of enchants and profession bonuses. The max level of Toughness gives 60 stamina right now. In Cataclysm it’s going to give 121 stamina. There’s a chest enchant that gives 75 stamina. Several different new tanking enchants as well, like +blocking on bracers, +dodge on bracers, +dodge on weapon. Hopefully this means we won’t still be using Mongoose still in Cataclysm, haha.

I know these are just placeholders and probably will change, but think about what that might mean for other things. If Toughness is 120 stamina, then would epic gems in Cataclysm give 60 stamina each (following the formula of epic gems being about half the stamina of the prof. bonus)? Gravity thinks this means we’ll see tanks in T11 with 120k hp. Hawt.

If you want to see something really cool, check out the maps of all the various zones on mmo-champ. Some crazy changes there that I won’t spoil in this space. (Likewise, I’ll be sure to post spoiler warnings and tuck stuff behind a read more link when it comes to storyline and whatnot…)

I’m eagerly awaiting some more substantive leaks. For now though I’m content to know that the first hole has opened up in the dam, and eventually we’ll have a torrent.

Yesterday someone spotted on the Spanish WoW forums this revealing quote from a Blue:

Looking to Cataclysm, maybe you want to know that, for normal dungeons, players must discover the dungeon in the world prior to access it from LFD tool. It is possible that you could see attunements for heroics and raids (which would be similar to the one of Karazhan). Developers aren’t sure yet of whether they use attunements or not. However, heroic dungeons at level 85 would probably have more gear requirement (in comparison) than heroic dungeons at level 80.

From this there are two points I’d like to address. The first is the idea of raid attunements.

I think they’re a great idea.

But, not the way they were done in the past. The old BC system was broken, it punished guilds when they had to recruit, and made it really hard for players who joined the raiding scene late to jump into the end game, without forcing a guild to go back and do old content so the new recruits could join the rest of the raid in the current tier. Imagine if that old system was still in place and you had to drag someone through Ulduar again before you could take them to ToC. That would be excruciating.

I tweeted about this yesterday, but I think a great “tweak” to the attunement system would be to do something like the old BC system but couple it with the new guild achievement system to create a third way that doesn’t punish guild suffering from turnover. Set it up so there’s an achievement to unlock each raiding tier. To score the T12 achievement and open up Uldum (or whatever it will be), you need to have 25 guild members complete the quest chain through the T11 content that eventually attunes them to T12. Once you get 25/25 on that achievement, your guild dings, and future members (and anyone on the bench) are automatically attuned provided they are still in the guild.

I think raiding would be well-served by some sort of limited attunement system, especially the one I just outlined. Raiding needs that mystical je ne sais quois it had in the previous two x-pacs where progressing from tier to the other was marked by a lot more fanfare than a new patch. It doesn’t need to be some ridiculously onerous series of hoops, just a simple questline that would be fun and rewarding and easily accomplished by anyone seriously attempting the current raiding tier.

As for heroics, I hope that they do up the gear requirement to run them. Heroics should once again be heroic. I want a situation like we had in BC, where you had to grind a set of gear just to get ready for heroics. The day I dinged 80, I was herded directly into heroics, despite barely getting to the 535 defense minimum for them. Once I was in there, I girded my loins to be struck down immediately by some vengeful and vicious trash mob, but it never happened.

Likewise, I never got the point of having normal 80 dungeons and heroic 80 dungeons if people could just jump into heroics on day one. But, I guess that’s neither here nor there.

A great suggestion I saw on Blessing of Kings was for the first raiding tier to not open up until a bit of time after the expansion pack launched. That way people wouldn’t feel like they had to gogogo rush to max level, and then dive immediately into progression. If we were stuck in heroics for the first month or two of Cataclysm, it would make that “tier” of content more meaningful and feel less grindy right off the bat.

Ultimately, there are two sides to every coin. On one side, there’s how BC ran heroics and raids–forcing people to do lengthy questlines and kill certain bosses to move on to the next tier, and demanding rep grinds for unlocking heroics. On the flip side is the Wrath method–an “anything goes” model where someone can set foot in ICC without ever seeing an earlier tier raid, and likewise being able to jump into a heroic as soon as they hit 80.

Both were extremes, the wrong way to go about it. But, they both had One Big Thing right. The trick is finding the middle ground between the two in Cataclysm and hitting that sweet spot between exclusivity and accessibility.

The community is in complete uproar right now over the recently announced plans to change raiding in Cataclysm in regards to 10 and 25man raiding. As the announcement states, both will drop the same loot (thought 25s will drop more) and both will be of a comparable difficulty. Personally, I think this is a fantastic change, and this is coming from someone who primarily raids in 25s.

If my guild dies this summer, I would in a heart beat just switch to pure 10s and never look back. I love the reduced size, the relaxed atmosphere, the greater comraderie. The fact that more often than not in 25s you need to deal with people that if you had the luxury of choice, you would disassociate with, has always left a bad taste in my mouth for the larger raid setting.

Likewise, I’m excited for all the people that are 10man raiders, either by choice or not, and will get to have the same loot and the same prestige, provided difficulties are balanced. If that’s even possible. Sure, you can make LK-25 have more health and do more damage than LK-10, but there are some things that will be harder to balance between 10s and 25s. More existential things. For example, Empowered Shock Vortex is *so* much easier to avoid in 10man, because you have so many fewer melee. Likewise the air phases on BQL, with only 10 people spreading out is cake.

Another plus: I won’t have to run two versions of the same content every week to max out my emblems intake. I never want to go back to the ToC system where I was doing ToC-10, H ToC-10, and ToC-25 every goddamn week. That was a prescription for burnout if I ever saw one.

But overall I think the change is awesome, and as long as they find some way to normalize the difficulty between 10s and 25s (and not just make 25s as easy as 10s, but rather the reverse) then it will be a boon for every aspiring raider in Azeroth. I could care less if someone in a strict 10man gets to enjoy the same flavor of ice cream as me. As long as we both worked as hard to chase down the truck, we deserve access to the same stuff.

On AVR

Ever since this was featured on mmo-champ this weekend, suddenly everyone knows about it, for good or ill. Mostly ill.

The reactions have run the gamut from “this cheapens raiding” to “this is cheating!!!” to “good players don’t need it, bad players will still stand in fire.”

I’ve sung the praises of this mod recently, and I will continue to do so. I love it, it’s awesome, and yes I like it because it makes certain bosses easier. For Rotface we used to stack on one leg then shift to another when a Big Ooze exploded. Now we just take care not to stand in the red circle. On 10man last night, I don’t think anyone ever even got hit by an ooze rocket.

I realize now I’ve offered evidence for the anti-AVR crowd. I guess all I can offer in the addon’s defense is that where some people see cheats, I see streamlining.

Perhaps (assuming Blizzard doesn’t kill this mod) the fact that an addon can neuter their oh-so-favorite mechanic, the “don’t stand in x”, they will respond by introducing some more depth to encounters that go beyond standing in the right place at the right time. I think it’s about time we finally kill off the void zone as a staple of boss design.

And ultimately I suppose that’s AVR’s sole strength: it kills the void zone. Using this mod won’t make slack-jawed raiders keep a Valk from dropping someone to their death, or get their bite off during BQL, or not stack their Mystic Buffet too high. AVR makes raiding as easy mode as DBM did when it allowed your to see the timers on boss abilities. It’s just another tool in the box.

1. Ret Paladins (at least) will be getting an interrupt.

Q. What information/ideas can you share on PvP utility in the Retribution tree? Mandatory gap closer/interrupt question. Not having a cleanse will hurt. :\
A. Retribution paladins will be getting an interrupt.

It’s disappointing they side-stepped the gap closer portion of the question. That’s a pretty serious concern for Ret that they’re losing a lot from their defensive bag of tricks, without much offense-oriented to make up for it. An interrupt is nice, a gap closer is near-mandatory I would say.

2. What goes in our Libram slot will be homogenized, in that we’ll be sharing more generic relics with Death Knights and maybe Druids.

Q: Will relics and wands be getting any new attention in Cataclysm?
A: With relics, the plan is to make them class agnostic. In other words, there might be a +strength relic that a death knight or paladin might want to equip. We think that will let us add more of them to the game without them being so specialized. They will feel more like wands.

This is interesting and unexpected. While lore-wise it doesn’t make much sense for a Paladin and DK to share a relic, in a design sense it seems prudent.

3. Vengeance is being designed with off tanks in mind.

Q: Can you go into more detail on Vengeance? As it stands it sounds like off tanks will be at a significant disadvantage.
A: We want Vengeance to have a long enough duration that off tanks won’t lose their damage bonus. In most situations, the off tank is doing some tanking along the way. The worst case scenario would be say a fight where the off tank needs to tank in phase 3 but not phase 1. Remember, even in that case though you have tools to generate high threat. Vengeance is there to keep DPS from pulling off you late in the fight.

As an oft-off tank, I feel assuaged. As long as the duration is long and even little ticks of AOE set off Vengeance, it’ll be good for us tanking wingmen too. And, finally, an excuse to stand in void zones.

4. Holy Shock will still have a damage component despite being baseline and available for Ret/Prot.

Q: Now that paladin’s Holy Shock is baseline is there any plans to change the Art of War talent?
A: We like Art of War, so we don’t expect it will go away. We understand the concern that Holy Shock might compete with Art of War a little bit in terms of role (an instant damage spell) and that’s something we’re going to have to address.

Just don’t screw it up for us! I want that ranged goodness to stay intact, more or less.