The first thirty minutes
I was up until about 1:30, installing beta and then patch beta, and patching beta, and … patching beta. It took quite a lot of time.
Once everything was done, I copied a character onto the beta and then flew over the spires of Orgrimmar, sighed contentedly, and then passed out on my keyboard.
Then about and hour ago I finally got the chance to hop on again and began doing what I do best: obsessively, and compulsively, build the perfect sand castle before the tide comes in. I specced like so:
Then hit up the trainer to grab some skills:
Apparently there’s a fun bug where you can’t train anything at the moment. That wouldn’t fly for me, so I did the painful work-around of dropping a profession first and then was able to pick up Seal of Truth, Word of Glory, and the ability to Parry.
Once that was done, I larded up my bars with all the skills and attacks I could squeeze on them and keybound everything just right.
Once that was all done, something still didn’t seem right. I wracked my Belf-like noggin’ and decided I needed a tabard for some vain reason. So I tracked down the Tabard Vendor and purchased the snappiest number they had.
Alright, we’re golden, time to hit up some beta!
Dammit.
I did manage to check out one thing from my list (yes, I made a list of things to check out): what does the new Consecration interface look like?
Well it puts a little timer underneath your player unit frame that counts down how long you have left on the duration of your Consecrate. When you drop a new one, the timer resets. Pretty cool, especially if we’re going to be using 2/2 Hallowed Ground, it’ll be nice to be able to keep track on the full duration of a debuff that we just dump on the ground.
Once the server gets back up I’ll hit the dummies and run some logs and see what our “rotation” looks like at the moment and how much everything hits for.
By the way, if there’s anything you want me to check out–be it a location, an npc, how much Holy Light hits for in prot gear, whatever–just comment and ask. I don’t mind running around and taking screenshots!
Armory Feed
Why exactly is Reckoning suddenly useful for tanks? Is it because there won’t be parry-haste in Cataclysm anymore?
Reckoning has been a useful talent for threat throughout WotLK. You should go read the maintankadin forums, there are charts done by theck.
@Rhidach
1 August 2010 at 11:16 am #
It’s actually garbage right now because block chance is really, really low. Holy Shield also seems to be bugged and only gives .5% block per HP charge. I’m speccing out of it.
How about some quick and dirty health numbers, unbuffed and with your gear?
Rather than teasing me with HL-in-prot numbers, do you or anyone else have a line on any Holy Paladins posting their own numbers?
Oh, and it sounds like you should start a screenshot collection in order to post a tour of all the Tirion statues. Bolvar? Whozzat?
Joe Ego’s last blog ..Welcome!
Kurn, over at her Corner, is covering the Holy Paladin angle quite well. She just got in yesterday like our favorite tankadin, but it is a blog to watch.
@Anafielle
1 August 2010 at 12:05 am #
“Once that was all done, something still didn’t seem right. I wracked my Belf-like noggin’ and decided I needed a tabard for some vain reason.”
Rofl. No wonder you don’t play alliance. Such a blood elf, through and through!
@Orthien
1 August 2010 at 1:58 am #
One thing I would like to see is how long it takes to build Conviction with the HoR judgement crits and how long the fight needs to run for to have the overall damage boost from Conviction pass the increased damage from 3/3 Imp Judgements.
Orthien’s last blog ..The Positives of Opposites
@Rhidach
1 August 2010 at 11:18 am #
I’m interested in testing crit rates as well (only at 3% at 80), so even with Sacred Duty only have 13% crit rate on HotR. I won’t be able to find out until 85 when I have enough points for 3/3 of that talent.
Nice post! Really looking forward to more juicy info!
@Orthien
2 August 2010 at 4:29 pm #
The other thing I like to know from Beta is if there are any spots with enough mobs/fast enough respawns to make grinding an quick way to powerlevel.
If not then how would instance grinding compare to quest grinding in the intrest of server first.
Orthien’s last blog ..Build of Block and Shields
@Rhidach
3 August 2010 at 8:16 am #
I’ll check how much xp I’m getting from mobs, but so far everything I’ve run into is somehow quest related. I haven’t seen any secluded packs, though I haven’t gone looking for them either.
And the instance I ran only gave me two bubbles for up to the third boss.