3.2 Coliseum best-in-slot list

I’m consolidating the 10 and 25man lists for this go-around because, thanks to the way emblems of triumph drop, the two groups kind of blend into one another. Also, I’m only linking the Horde versions of all the listed items (lok’tar ogar) because the stats are the same so it’d be silly to link both. As always I tend to judge an item more favorably based on Effective Health. Gem slots are basically equated to 30 stam, because it’s assumed you’re going to slap a Solid MZ in there.

The gear this patch is pretty formulaic. Typically it goes Col25 Heroic > Col10 Heroic > Col25 > Col10, with crafted items really good and emblem-purchasable items equal to normal Col25 items.

I’m sorry, I know there’s a lot of heroic mode gear on this list that might be out of the reach of many (myself included probably). In the near future I’ll expand the list down to the easiest to reach item for someone who does normal-mode 10man raids.

Head

1. Liadrin’s Faceguard of Triumph (H) (T9.58 token)
2. Liadrin’s Faceguard of Triumph (75 Emblems, 1 Trophy)
3. Headplate of the Honorbound (75 Emblems)

Neck

1. Legionnaire’s Gorget (H) (H Jaraxxus25)
2. Fortitude of the Infernal (H) (H Jaraxxus10)
3. Legionnaire’s Gorget (N Jaraxxus25)

Shoulders

1. Liadrin’s Shoulderguards of Triumph (H) (T9.58 token)
2. Sunreaver Defender’s Pauldrons (H) (H Faction Champs10)
3. Liadrin’s Shoulderguards of Triumph (45 Emblems, 1 Trophy)
4. Shoulderguards of the Enduring Order (45 Emblems of Triumph)

Chest

1. Hauberk of the Towering Monstrosity (H) (H Northrend Beasts25)
2. Breastplate of the White Knight (Crafted)
3. Liadrin’s Breastplate of Triumph (H) (T9.58 token)
4. Liadrin’s Breastplate of Triumph (75 Emblems, 1 Trophy)

Wrist

1. Saronite Swordbreakers (Crafted)
2. Armguards of the Shieldmaiden (H) (H Twin Val’kyrs25)
3. Dreadscale Bracers (H) (H Beasts10)

Hands

1. Liadrin’s Handguards of Triumph (H) (T9.58 token)
2. Liadrin’s Handguards of Triumph (45 Emblems, 1 Trophy)
3. Handguards of Revitalization (Freya25 Hard Mode)

Waist

1. Belt of Bloodied Scars (H) (H Faction Champs25)
2. Belt of the Nether Champion (H) (H Jaraxxus10)
3. Belt of Bloodied Scars (N Faction Champs25)

Legs

1. Legplates of Feverish Dedication (H) (H Jaraxxus25)
2. Liadrin’s Legguards of Triumph (H) (T9.58 token)
3. Liadrin’s Legguards of Triumph (75 Emblems, 1 Trophy)

Boots

1. Dawnbreaker Sabatons (H) (H Jaraxxus25)
2. Greaves of the Lingering Vortex (H) (H Twin Val’kyrs10)
3. Dawnbreaker Sabatons (N Jaraxxus25)

Cloak

1. Cairne’s Endurance (H Tribute Chest25)
2. Cloak of the Unflinching Guardian (H) (H Tribute Chest10)
3. Pride of the Demon Lord (H) (H Jaraxxus25)

Rings

1. Band of the Traitor King (H) (H Anub25)
2. Band of the Twin Val’kyr (H) (H Twin Val’kyr10)
3. Band of the Traitor King (N Anub25)
4. Clutch of Fortification (35 Emblems of Triumph)

Trinkets

1. Juggernaut’s Vitality (H) (H Faction Champs25)
2. Juggernaut’s Vitality (N Faction Champs25)
3. Heart of Iron (Ignis25)
4. Royal Seal of King Llane (Yogg10)
5. The Black Heart (The Black Knight, Trial of the Champion)

Weapon

1. Ogrim’s Deflector (H Tribute Chest25)
2. Blood and Glory (H Tribute Chest10)
3. Ardent Guard (H) (H Anub’arak10)
4. Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers (XT-002 25 Hard Mode)
5. Shiver (Hodir10 Hard Mode)
6. Titanguard (Flame Leviathan25)
7. Ardent Guard (N Anub’arak10)

Shield

1. Forlorn Barrier (H) (H Northrend Beasts25)
2. The Boreal Guard (Hodir10 Hard Mode)
3. Aegis of the Coliseum (H) (H Anub’arak10)
4. Aegis of the Coliseum (N Anub’arak10)

Libram

1. Libram of Defiance (25 Emblems of Triumph)
2. Libram of Obstruction (15 Emblems of Heroism)
3. Libram of the Sacred Shield (19 Emblems of Conquest)
4. Libram of Valiance [only worth like ~140 BV] (25 Emblems of Triumph)

Please let me know if you think I missed a piece or have one in the wrong place.

How I specced in 3.2

This post is long overdue, but I wanted to take some time to explain my current spec and specifically some choices I did or did not make.

Here is the spec in all its glory: 0/53/18.

Crusade > SotP

One of the bigger choices I made when talenting was speccing into Ret for Crusade rather than Seals of the Pure. Why did I do this? Well, primarily because the Crusade talent may seem like less threat on paper this is only when considering it at the 3% level. When facing Undead/Humanoid/Elemental/Demon mobs, the damage bonus jumps to 6% and that is when Crusade really begins to shine.

I wrote extensively about the two talents when SotP was first changed for the better.

Now, Northrend is still crawling with Scourge (Undead) and Humanoids, and because the Coliseum is, excepting Icehowl and the two Jormungar, packed to the brim with UHED bosses, it makes sense to choose Crusade over SotP. You’re going to get more mileage out of the former talent.

2/2 Imp Judgements

Like Randall in Clerks 2, I’m taking back 2/2 Imp Judgements. If anyone calls you on dropping a second point in this talent, all you need to know is this: any tank worth their salt has the discipline to maintain 969 even if a cooldown is up one second earlier. If you’re using Judgement when it isn’t Judgement’s turn, you’re not doing a proper rotation. Additionally, an 8 second Judgement is much more convenient for trash when a steady rotation is impossible, so it makes sense not to artificially restrict yourself to a 9 second Judgement.

Where else would that point go? Benediction? Meh. 1/1 Improved Blessing of Might? Nah. Topping off Imp Judgements is the logical choice.

Talents you still want to avoid

Stoicism, Guardian’s Favor, and Improved Hammer of Justice are really more pvp-flavored and have no place in a strictly pve spec. There are some merits to the latter talent, but I’d rather focus on my own job in a raid than a rogue’s.

Divinity is still bad. 5% heals sounds great, but the ROI is not worth the 5 talents points.

Likewise, Reckoning has some synergy with SotP, but in lieu of an SotP spec, it’s not worth getting. The tps return per talent point isn’t worth depriving yourself a mitigation talent like Divine Guardian.

In which I backtrack

Now, one caveat: we all have the two-point “fluff” bridge to carry us past the lower-tree talents to Blessing of Sanctuary and beyond. I spent my two bridge points on Divine Guardian. If you raid with nothing but Holy Paladins out the wazoo, DG is not an ideal talent, assuming they have it as well and they’re slapping an improved Sacred Shield on you and the other tanks.

I am unfortunately not so lucky, the Holy Pallies in my guild being addicted to Ret tree crit still. Alas, DG is for me. If you are so lucky, however, it is not a terrible idea to spend those bridge points on Improved Hammer of Justice for a 40 second cooldown, or Reckoning for a 60 tps gain. You do after all have to spend those points somewhere in that early portion of the Prot tree.

Now I turn the floor to you all. How are you speccing this patch?

Damocles’ nerf hammer danglin’ over our heads

Ironically, I had in the can a post I was going to write called “Are we going to get nerfed?” and here’s our answer: yes, but slightly. And not where you’d expect.

The 3.2.2 patch notes came down this morning with the following pertinent pieces:

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.
• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

This is an all around threat nerf (obviously), though curiously they haven’t tackled Ardent Defender… er, yet. They might be content to leave it as is due to “class population balance” concerns, but who knows?

In case you’re maybe thinking, as I did originally, they tuned down RF to make up for a spell power gain from the new TbtL, that’s not the case. With the old TbtL I have 904 spell power. If the new one was in effect today, I’d have 800. 100 spell power isn’t a lot of threat lost in the great scheme of things, but a 10% threat modifier is, alas.

Even with these changes I suspect we’ll still be the best threat tanks, but less so than before.

The Seal of Command change is kind of exciting, and I wonder if they’re intending to turn it into the tanking seal with the AOE damage? Or if it’s to give Ret an option on trash?

Lastly, mmo-champion is busy ripping all the items from the patch files. They already have some new pets up as well as some of the loot from Onyxia. The Priest T2 helm for example is listed, and looks pretty nice (it’s iLevel 232, which makes me think the 10/25 versions will drop gear with item budgets similar to Coliseum non-heroic modes). The only concern is it kept resistance stats, which is … sad. Might mean we won’t be seeing a new Judgement Crown that’s viable for tanking. Wait and see, I guess.

There’s only one thing I was for 3.2.2mas: an iLevel 245 Quel’Serrar. My dream may yet some true.

Hit, expertise, and your third glyph slot

A major concern that is wracking the tanking world right now is the utter dearth of hit rating on 25man raid gear. Prior to the few upgrades I yanked out of the Coliseum this week I was sitting at full hit cap, 263. Now, thanks to said upgrades and swapping in the SoV glyph I find myself already soft capped for expertise (great) but now only at 175 hit (boo).

This problem is only going to get worse as I continue to get gear from Col25. If I were to deck myself completely out in those items, I’d be sitting at 214 expertise. That’s 26 skill, the soft cap.

Once the soft cap of expertise is reached, additional points of expertise come with a tps benefit reduced by half.

As such, I’m contemplating how much longer I’m going to delay before I ditch the SoV glyph… er, again. And, likewise, what I’m going to replace it with.

Because of the loss of hit that will be going hand in hand with this rise in expertise, the Glyph of Righteous Defense is a natural choice. What concerns me most about losing hit isn’t so much the tps loss, but the threat to the healers’ well-being if a taunt misses (which it’ll have a much higher chance to do).

I could swap in the Judgement glyph, but Judgement is such a miniscule part of my tps that the glyph wouldn’t have enough of an effect to be worthwhile. I’m definitely open to suggestions for replacements.

Are you not entertained?!

Srsly, how long until someone makes a machinima movie of some shirtless human spinning around in a circle in the Crusader’s Coliseum and /yelling that phrase?

Um, but anyways. Last night was the first time ES walked into the Col25 raid and there was a wide range of opinions on how the night would go. Some doom-and-gloomers (shockingly, not yours truly) were expecting a wipe fest. Others just wanted to stay upbeat and put some good learning attempts in. The daring few (ahem) read this whole patch as being basically a wet kiss to casual players, and with the splitting off of a heroic difficulty setting suspected that the encounters would be a cakewalk once learned. Well, I was sadly right.

I say “sadly” only because I recall our first night in Ulduar with masochistic fondness. It was a huge knock on our ass that made us recognize that we’d been coddled by Naxx, and that raiding was much, much more difficult than Kel’Thuzad let on. And even though those early days were overtuned (and subsequently toned down) Ulduar continued to be a major headache for us all throughout 3.1. We never finished the place, and yet, with the easy gear of this patch… and apparently this raid, if the rest of it follows the same pattern… we’ll probably be storming back in short order brandishing 245 gear and suffering from a severe lack of chewing gum.

We started the night with a very productive guild meeting where I outlined my pet project, the DPS improvement initiative, and put everyone on notice that thanks to the Conquest badge change they were in charge of running heroics to get to the 226 level if they weren’t there yet, and to hit a 4k dps minimum baseline. Everyone seemed on board with that, so we’ll see how the dps situation goes from here.

As for the raid, we rolled in at 8 server time with a very strong group. Two developments I’ve been very happy about are the returns of Falowin and Morvain, two of our premier raiders that dropped out of the game a few months ago for various reasons. I’m sure it wasn’t just them being there, but there was a much different atmosphere to the whole raid than we’ve seen in the last few Uld weeks. It was… refreshed.

That’s the beauty of new content. It’s new. You haven’t been wiping on the same boss the last few weeks and aren’t yet sick of the lead up to some encounter; everything is exciting and fresh. This was definitely something the guild needed as a whole to get that awful taste of Ulduar out of our mouths.

To speak briefly about damage taken before I get into fight descriptions–I heard one of the tanks remarking that everything hit really hard in 10man. He didn’t elaborate, but from the tone of his complaints it sounded like bosses were going to hit much harder than any Ulduar boss. They didn’t. Honestly, if you can survive not getting instagibbed by a boss in Ulduar, you should be fine here. I had about 45k health last night and I was good to go.

Now, the first boss encounter is actually three bosses.

Gormok the Impaler

Biggest thing from a tank perspective is this: you get stacks of Impale (a bleed dot) which means you want a tank switch. On 25man the Impale stays up for a long time, so ideally Tank A racks up 3 stacks, Tank B taunts and holds it, then Tank A lets his stacks drop off and taunts back, Tank B does the same, rinse and repeat.

During the fight little Snobolds will get tossed onto random players. DPS needs to burn those off. If someone in melee has one on them and you’re not tanking, might as well help knock it off them. Name plates being enabled are a life-saver for spotting these.

Oh, and don’t be silly like me and cast Exorcism by accident during this phase. The boss will do an interrupting ground stomp and lock you out of the Holy school for around 8 seconds. Not good!

Dreadscale and Acidmaw

Two Jormungars! One will always be above ground the other just sticking out of it. Dreadscale applies a debuff on the tank called “Burning Bile” while Acidmaw applies a debuff called “Paralyzing [Something]“. You need the burning debuff to remove the paralysis debuff. The worms switch spots after a short while, so at one point the moving worm tank will be at risk of paralysis and need someone with the Burning debuff to remove it, other times the tank needs people with Paralysis to run over to him/her before they freeze up completely and die. Mobility is a big part of this phase.

The moving worm also needs to be constantly moved, as he drops acid clouds ala Grobbulus.

And be sure to kill Acidmaw first so you don’t get stuck with Paralyzed people and no Burning debuff to remove it.

Icehowl

Probably one of the more fun fights I’ve done in a while. The entire fight consists of everyone spreading out around the boss while he’s tanked in the center. Every so often Icehowl will do a “Massive Crash” sending everyone to the walls. He’ll then target a random person and charge. People in his path have a speed buff to help them get out of the way. If Icehowl runs over anyone on the way to the wall (even if he didn’t call your name out) he’ll enrage. The enrage can be tranq shotted off. If he doesn’t hit anyone, Icehowl will run into the wall and be stunned, and take extra damage for a short time.

Just make sure everyone knows how to move out of the way and this is easy sauce.

After Icehowl goes down you’ll get 3 Emblems of Triumph, along with the normal smattering of loot. I picked up the Hauberk of the Towering Monstrosity, which at 180 stam and 2 gem sockets is just… monstrous. Not to mention 90 defense. What an amazing item.

The next time you talk to the starting npc he’ll bring out a gnome that pales in comparison to Milhouse Manastorm.

…As Jaraxxus will then prove.

This fight was hilarious to do last night because there really weren’t any strats to refer to other than ability lists. We were more or less were going in blind, having to figure out what the hell was going on. The first attempt was just chaos, people running around like crazy, and then when the first person got hit with Incinerate Flesh all the healers spun on a dime to pour tps in them, allowing Jaraxxus to quickly murder the tanks. Eek.

After a few more attempts we refined our technique where the second to last attempt we got him to 3% when he enraged. 10 minute enrage timer, bee tee dubs.

To sum it up from the tank perspective, you’re either on Jaraxxus or you’re on adds. If on Jaraxxus you need to move him away from stuff when they pop up. Move Jaraxxus away from portals, and move him away from any infernals that roll over to root themselves next to you. Infernals won’t move while casting their AOE, so you just need to drag them away before the melee gets wiped out.

If you’re the add tank, grab a Mistress of Pain whenever she emerges from a portal and drag her over to the boss. Everyone focuses her down then switches back to the boss. Cut and dry. When a volcano emerges, pick up each infernal as they spawn and mark one for ranged to dps down. The infernals will periodically roll away from you, but don’t worry. Just let people know if they don’t see a roll ball of green doom siddle up next to them. It’s hard to miss, I’m sure.

So the second to last attempt was a 3% enrage wipe. The following attempt everything clicked, everyone knew the deal, and we burnt him down in record time with not a single death. It was a thing of beauty.

I’m fairly certain that next week we can easily one or two-shot these guys.

How refreshing, 2/5 of Col25 being easy farm already.

The value of block

With the doubling of block value across items the stat, has become a lot more attractive than it’s ever been. One major reason for this is, as Paladins, we have the advantage of being able to consider Block Value as Effective Health. Because of Holy Shield it’s possible to keep ourselves block capped at all times, which in turn means that every hit we take will be mitigated by BV. So, if you have 2300 BV, it’s like having 2300 more hit points.

As such, when evaluating gear, I’ve started looking at any additional BV stat like it was an additional health stat. Consider the stat this way: Every 114 block value is basically equivalent to 10 stamina.

Ketchup

And so I have returned from the perilous north where bears and cellphones roam. Despite my best efforts the only time I could find any WiFi was standing outside a tchotchke shop on the main drag of North Conway, so rather than having a chance to post I just consumed as much 3.2 information as I could bring up on my tiny iPod screen. It was fun though coming home to the hecticness of all I needed to do with the new patch, like regemming/speccing, the new engineering toys, etc. More on that later.

Firstly, notice anything different?

Hellz yes, I got my Titanguard. Figures it happens the week a new tier of content came out, but que sera sera. We kind of just threw together an Uld25 this weekend just to do FL and maybe Razorscale and XT (aka the easy bosses) and wouldn’t you know it that little beaut’ dropped.

Side note: the XT encounter was changed, although I’m not entirely sure why. When was the last time Blizz upped the difficulty of an obsolete encounter? For those who haven’t tried XT since the patch, you can’t use the “tank between two piles” strategy anymore, because you can only cut off spawns from one pile now (and only by tanking XT right on top of that pile). Moreover, a lot more adds spawn now, with more bomb bots as well. Ranged needs to stay on their toes and use the bomb bots to dispatch the scrap bots pronto. It’s slightly harder now, but that also may have been because we were gimping the fight to begin with with some… er… creative uses of game mechanics.

Speaking of dungeons, I haven’t had the pleasure of trying Coliseum yet but I hear the first encounter is a lot of fun. In the meantime I’ve been getting my fill of the Tournament by endlessly running the new 5man. The normal version has a very sezzy trinket, the Black Heart, which is just awesome because it has an EH proc. Even better, I don’t have to worry about putting epic gems in my Monarch Crab.

(Sorry, another side note: I hate the proc animation of the Black Heart. It looks like someone just cast BoP on you. When I first saw this proc on another tank I freaked out thinking I accidentally threw a BoP on them and was in the process of wiping the group. This definitely needs a fix!)

Other great items to look for in the 5man heroic are the Peacekeeper Blade and the Mark of the Relentless. Both make up for their 219 iLevel by having a gem slot which makes them strong EH items with a Solid MZ socketed.

With the release of epic gems I’m definitely going to be shifting around some pieces to maximize my stamina and ride the defense minimum on a razor’s edge. I’m thinking of swapping back in the T8.5 gloves, putting the mind control tinker on my helm, and then nabbing the Mark of the Relentless from TOC if I have enough defense to swing all this edge-of-my-pants nonsense.

I’m very excited about the Engineering changes that came with this patch. Jeeves is an awesome toy and was a lot of fun to put together considering all the crazy robots you assemble it out of, not the mention the horribly frustrating several hour grind to get the schematic. Well worth it though to have on-the-hour access to my bank. Also great is the new auctioneer in Like Clockwork in Dal, which saves me the trouble of logging on a bank alt to hit the AH, and the Wormhole Generator which (along with the Crusader’s Tabard) means I’ll never have to sit on a zeppelin to Northrend again.

Lastly, a few quick impressions of the changes to Pally tanking that came with this patch:

• I dislike not having Exorcism handy as a pulling tool. I used to use to with Hand of Reckoning for those two-mobs-surrounding-a-door pulls where I’d Ex one then Reck the other, then when they got next to each other follow up with a shield toss. Now it’s more like Reck to pull (since you do more damage if the mob isn’t targeting you) then shield toss as a follow up. Less initial threat is a bummer.
• Vindication is an awesome, awesome change and I really enjoy having my own version of Demoralizing Shout. It’s a little slice of homogeny pie I can get behind.
• I need to get over my bias of turning down a piece of gear if it has expertise on it, and my revulsion at parry. Both aren’t terrible anymore, and it’s actually conducive to decent threat to be soft capped for expertise now. I definitely recommend grabbing the SoV/C glyph.
• And of course, how can I not mention our new second cooldown, Ardent Defender. I’ve seen this beauty pop a few more times than I care to admit, but it’s a nice reminder that a bad situation was nearly prevented. I’m also relishing the DK tank constantly calling me OP. Crow, it’s what’s for dinner.

I have a whole list of topics written down of what I want to go over this week, so look for lots of further dissections of various changes from 3.2.