What to look forward to from Patch 3.0.8

It’d be appropriate if patch 3.0.8 was released two days before Christmas, because it’s definitely a huge wet kiss for tanks in many ways. Alas it’s still plucking away on the PTR, but every updated build does bring us exciting news about new tools or items we’ll have at our disposal soon enough, so there’s some consolation in that.

But anyhoo, here’s what prot pallies in particular have to look forward to (of course this is all subject to change, it is still in testing after all):

New Enchants

Enchant Weapon – Titanguard – enchants a one-handed weapon to increase stamina by 75. Costs 5 Abyss Crystals to learn. Mats for the enchant are 12 dream shards.

Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina – enchants a wrist-slot item to increase stamina by 40. Costs 5 Abyss Crystals to learn. The materials for the enchant are 4 Greater Cosmic Essences, 4 Dream Shards, and 4 Abyss Crystals. Ouch.

Plans: Titanium Plating – adds 40 block value to a shield. This plan can be purchased from Horde Expedition/Alliance Vanguard when exalted. Mats are 4 Titanium Bars and 4 Eternal Shadows.

Better Equipment

The Tempered Titansteel Helm is getting a nice boost – a meta and blue gem slot. More about that in this post.

New Spells

Hand of Reckoning – a ranged single-target taunt that does holy damage. Sweet.

Spell Changes

Judgement of Light no longer causes threat based on heals it does to party/raid members. Kind of crappy in the sense that it provided a nice threat boost when main tanking anything. However, the flip side of this was when off tanking you’d have to judge wisdom, or you’d eventually rip aggro of the MT by accident.

Divine Protection and Divine Shield have been retooled so that both no longer cause an attack speed penalty, but rather that they halve your damage by 50%. Unlike previously, you cannot talent out of the reduction.

Talent Changes

Sacred Duty no longer affects the penalties of Divine Shield/Protection, but the stamina increase has been upped from 6 to 8%.

Profession Changes

I think it’s a fair assumption to assume that most prot pallies have mining as one of their primary professions. Well, the health bonus from Toughness is being changed from increasing straight hp to increasing stamina, with the last rank providing 50 stam instead of 500 hp. This is a pretty nice bonus. With the change to Sacred Duty and the already existing +6% stamina bonus from Combat Expertise, Rank 5 Toughness will give 572 hp. Moreover, that additional stamina will convert to spell power as well. Not too shabby.

News from PTRland

On my to-do list for posts is what to look forward to when patch 3.0.8 drops, but in the meantime here’s a little nugget from the latest build, according to MMO-Champion. The Tempered Titansteel Helm is getting revamped to gain a meta slot and a blue slot. The iLevel didn’t change and it didn’t drop any stats from what I can see. So now it actually looks very, very solid (much better than my current Arcane-Shielded Helm).

If it leaves the PTR like this I’m going to have to snatch it up… time to start stocking up on titansteel bars.

I’m a dope

After months of cajoling I finally got some of my friends to wander into Onyxia’s Lair with me. My goal was to drop the Unfired Ancient Blade on the ground and eventually slay the wyrm with it. Alas, I’m a moron. In the excitement of my first Onyxia fight, I completely forgot to drop the blade until right after Onyxia’s corpse hit the floor of her lair. No Quel’Serrar this week.

Oh well, next reset.

The gear wishlist [updated]

Most class-specific blogs will write a guide on how to gear for Naxx. I’m late to the game, and am already geared for said raid (I’ll write how I did get geared later), but I might as well share my immediate upgrades wishlist. The numbering is basically the priority I’m putting on replacing that piece.

1. Chest

Heroes’ Redemption Breastplate — I’m sitting on 74 emblems. 6 to go and this baby is mine. Got it.

2. Shoulders
My shoulders are currently crap: some BOE I bought off the AH because what I had before was subcrap. These would be my #1 priority if I wasn’t 6 badges from the T7 chest.

Pauldrons of the Colossus — theoretically the easiest to get, 7 shots at this a week. Also picked these up.
Abomination Shoulderblades — would prefer these over a blue, but only 1 shot a week
Heroes’ Redemption Shoulderguards — also 1 shot a week, but… T7!

3. Finger

Signet of the Impregnable Fortress — 25 emblems of valor, quickest valor epic to pick up. In the meantime I’ll keep cycling in better and better blues to replace my non-Earthguard ring.

4. Trinket
My dilemma for trinkets is that I’m currently using Seal of the Pantheon as a defense crutch. Probably ditching Seal for one the following two would be the easiest way to kick the habit a bit.

Essence of Gossamer — 111 stam… /drool. So much HP, and threat to boot. And the proc isn’t half bad.
Lavanthor’s Talisman — I miss my old Figurine of the Colossus dearly. This will make a nice replacement and a great–er, crap, a crutch–for getting block capped. On the plus side, this of the ShoR crits!

5. Feet
At the moment I’m wearing these, which despite being “epic” aren’t very excitingly itemized. All that stam is nice, but it’s a tad much. Some more def or additional avoidance would be nice, eh?

Plague-Impervious Boots — the ideal replacement, and off the first boss of a Naxx wing to boot
Greaves of Ancient Evil — a much more attainable replacement. However, I’m currently avoiding Volazsj like the plague while my druid friend is specced Resto.
Sabatons of Draconic Vigor — very easily attained… but I just can’t bring myself to replace a purp with a rep blue

How I’m specced

Long story short, here’s the build I’m currently rocking: 3/52/12.

Primarily I’m acting as offtank for my guild in Naxx right now, in addition to running a multitude of heroics, so there are some “must have talents” I basically designed this spec around:

Pursuit of Justice: For running to pick up my target, not getting melted during Heigan, etc. I honestly don’t care about the reduced disarm, it’s all about the 15% run speed increase.

Heart of the Crusader: Awesome for heroics, great for Naxx if there are no ret pallies (which 75% of the time there are not in our runs). Adds some group utility.

Divine Guardian: A potential life saver in a raid when you’re all taking an obscene amount of AoE damage. Loatheb is a great example. If you don’t need to hold threat, it’s helpful to pop bubble and take 30% of the incoming damage of the table for 12 secs.

And yes, I know, no Kings. Why? Personally, I object to the presumption that I should spend 5 points on this, when it makes much sense for ret pallies building their way up to Improved Hammer of Justice. Of course, but not taking it, I was forced to put 1 point in IHoJ, and had 3 leftover points for Seals of the Pure. Embarrassing, I know.

Honestly, I’ll probably be respeccing and… ugh… picking up Kings in the near future. To accomplish this I’ll drop the 3 points in SotP, 1 in IHoJ, and 1 of the 2 in DG. Inelegant–but I really want to keep PoJ that badly.

You underestimate how fun it is to be able to outrun others.

Hello [Azeroth]!

I originally thought to change the default title that WordPress always adds to your first blog post, but, you know, it seems very appropriate in this case. Welcome to my new blog.

I’ve been mulling creating this site for some time now–at least since September when I came back to the game after a summer-long hiatus. What brought me to finally take the plunge? Eh, for starters I realized that having already leveled to 80, I missed some pretty good blog fodder for posts, so I might as well get gittin’ while the gittin’ is good. So to speak.

I’ll be writing about a wide-ranging assortment of topics from Paladin tanking to general Paladin news (ie. whatever nerfs Ret manages to inflict upon the rest of us) to even more general WoW news.

Also, I’m currently suffering from the Great Comcastic WoW-Outage of ’08. And in a huge snowstorm, no less. Awesome.

While I desperately await my fix, I’ll plug away the requisite posts: my spec, my gear wish list, etc. Coming shortly.

Anyways, stay tuned. Subscribe if you’d be so kind. I swear it’ll get interesting around here.