Ascending the roller coaster track once more

Ready for another drop on the roller coaster? More big changes coming in the next beta patch of two, apparently. After getting in to beta this past weekend, I felt like I reached a point of comfort with our attacks, and was planning to write a particularly detailed post about the “rotation”, but obviously I nearly spoke too soon. Ghostcrawler has come out with a raft of future changes to our abilities, so instead I’m going to go through each and add some insight from how these currently work on beta.

Shield of the Righteous — Now consumes Holy Power to cause damage.

Holy Shield — Now a passive ability that causes your Shield of the Righteous to provide 5% block per stack of Holy Power consumed. In other words, you never click Holy Shield. You just click Shield of the Righteous and buff yourself.

ShoR currently does not exist on beta, and I’m glad that it’ll soon be back. I was excited about this reintroduction when it was hinted at a few days ago, and I’m moreso now that they’re going to give it a whirl on beta. Right now HP is incredibly boring–you stack it to three then hit Holy Shield for a buggy block chance increase (sometimes it was doing 1.5%, sometimes 180%!) or give yourself a quick, boring heal. ShoR using Holy Power for an impressive single-target attack with add some much-needed flair to the system.

My biggest worry is whether we’ll expend the Holy Power if ShoR misses. That’d be pretty killer in a tight spot when previously we never had to worry about Holy Shield missing.

Also, not to try to reinvent the wheel here or anything, but… wouldn’t it more sense to–instead of making Holy Shield passive and bring back ShoR–but make Holy Shield an attack? Wouldn’t that be less work?

Hammer of the Righteous — Now generates Holy Power but shares a cooldown with Crusader Strike. Almost all talents that affect one or the other will affect both. The intention is you use Crusader Strike -> Shield of the Righteous for single target and Hammer of the Righteous -> Shield of the Righteous for multitarget.

I’m assuming this means Hammer’s cooldown is going to get reduced to 4 seconds, or the two abilities will meet somewhere in the middle. Likewise, I’m curious if HotR will retain its 100%-50%-25% damage spread in this new iteration. Hammer was hitting for about 3000 damage this weekend on its primary target, while Crusader was hitting for less. They’ll have to redesign Hammer (probably an equal damage spread among all three targets) to make it attractive for multi-target pulls and unattractive for single/bosses.

Avenger’s Shield — No real change, but it still hits pretty hard. Both CS and HotR can proc Grand Crusader to lower the Avenger’s Shield cooldown.

Let me just take a moment and proclaim my undying love for Avenger’s Shield as it is on beta now. When that ability comes off cooldown, you want to use it immediately (pronto!) because it’ll hit for around 7500 damage on each target it hits. No spread, 7500×3. Not only that, but I’ve seen it crit for 15,000, which is just breathtaking. I don’t think I usually crit for more than 10k in ICC 25 while fully buffed, and this ability can crit for 15k while soloing! More like Avenger’s Freight Train, eh?

They absolutely hit the nail on the head with this one. AS is fun to push, and when you see that Grand Crusader proc, you want to immediately indulge in some Captain America’ing. Probably the most tragic thing that has happened to me on beta so far is pushing back using Avenger’s Shield to get another CS off, and therefore generate some more HP, only to have that CS proc Grand Crusader, robbing me of an Avenger’s Shield. I’m man enough to admit I weeped.

Vindication — can be caused only by Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous.

Not very consequential, considering Vindication was bugged on beta to basically apply from anything. I’ll miss the brief shining moment that we had Holy Demo Shout, though. It’s going to be a pain to be the only tank class that can’t debuff an entire massive pull.

Holy Wrath — With the above changes, we think Prot paladins have enough rotational buttons to hit, so we are downplaying Holy Wrath. Holy Wrath is really intended as a Ret filler spell (for when other attacks are on cooldown). Prot could technically use Holy Wrath, but we aren’t providing any talent hooks.

This is probably a good idea. Right now our “rotation” (I keep using quote marks because it’s not a rotation, as I’ll explain shortly, and I can’t think of a better catch-all word) has a lot to keep track of. Holy Wrath is good for massive pulls to immediately build threat on a mob of tiny murlocs charging at your healer, or on a single target where it’ll hit for more than half of our abilities.

Once you get to three or more enemies though, it’s lightweight, and unless you can’t be arsed to tab around and build threat equally with more powerful attacks, there was no real incentive to using HW. Phasing this out for general purpose is a good idea, it should remain situational.

Consecration — Now on a 10 sec duration with a 30 sec cooldown. The Hallowed Ground talent makes it cheaper and hit harder — it does not affect duration. Use Consecration when you need it, but you can’t spam it. This is consistent with the AE changes we are making to all tanks.

There goes the UI element, I suspect!

From the limited time I had this past weekend I found myself just about never using Consecration. It hits for a piddling amount and often (thanks to Hallowed Ground) outlived it’s target by a wide margin. As such it was pretty deprioritized in my rotation. In Throne of the Tides, on the other hand, it was very hand for boss fights (fire and forget!) or for what few AOE pulls I could live through. All in all, I think a better design direction is a short-lived, harder hitting Consecration, over a long-lived, weaker version. The short duration and longer cooldown will make dropping the spell a much more meaningful action as well.

One last worry: with Holy Shield gone, ShoR’s return, and the combined cooldown of CS/HotR, that’s one less button to push. I wonder if we’re going to have some free GCDs now. On beta there’s always something to hit, so that’s not a worry but we’ll see with these changes if that remains the case.

Don’t call it a rotation

The version first I did (after the other first thing) in beta was I found some target dummies and tried all of our abilities to see how much they hit for. I had a legal pad in front of me, scribbling down numbers, and taking notes. I then plotted out a timeline of GCDs to try to figure out the smoothest rotation possible. Basically, some kind of analogue for 969. I quickly realized this was impossible, because there are so many intersecting tracks and cooldowns, and even a proc, that the only way to approach our rotation is to recognize what it truly is: a priority system.

Here is, based on what GC just proposed and what non-changing abilities are like on beta, what I suspect the priority system will soon be:

1. 3HP Shield of Righteousness
2. Avenger’s Shield — hits like a truck, and you don’t want to miss a Grand Crusader proc
3. Crusader Strike/Hammer of the Righteous — depending on size of pull
4. Holy Wrath — for single targets, assuming it still hits for around 2700
5. Judgement — only hits for around 1300, very weak. Moreover you really on need to use it once every 15 seconds or so, to make sure you keep the attack speed debuff up. If mana retains being a non-issue, then Judgements of the Wise is not a good enough reason to prioritize this.

Not sure where Consecration will fit there (I’ll have to see how damage it does). I suspect it’ll be under Hammer of the Righteous for large pulls.

I have to honestly say that I am loving Paladin tanking in beta. It’s reactive, there are choices you have to make on the fly to be a more effective tank. Furthermore, you have to make the right choices to put out the most threat and thus be the most effective tank. It rewards you for playing smart.

Beta Day 2: Exploring, waggling, Hyjal, and Throne of the Tides

I never got back online on Saturday after the 30 minutes I spent setting Rhidach, and had to wait until Sunday morning to do some real exploration of the changed world. Once I got back on that morning, I hopped on my Hippogryph and started touring Azeroth, checking out the more lore-heavy places that were important to my Paladin.

(Sidenote: this entire post might as well be one huge Cataclysm spoiler. If you don’t want to see anything from the screenshots I took, I’d recommend skipping the post. If enough people are trying to stay pristine I’ll start hiding this stuff behind a cut. Though, I didn’t really grab screens of anything particularly important.)

I immediately hopped on a zap to Undercity to check out Lordaeron and the Plaguelands, before ending at the training dummies in Silvermoon.

Flying over Undercity was a sight to see. I was always curious what was behind those massive locked doors in the courtyard (other than the transport orb to Silvermoon) and it’s just amazing to see the sprawling, ruined courtyards and gardens behind and around the citadel.

I then darted off eastward to pay a visit to my bud Tirion in Hearthglen. Looks like the guy has set himself up pretty well since we broke him out of that ice cube. Hell, looks like he took just about all the credit for the toppling of the Lich King and erected a monument to that effect.

If you don’t think that’s vainglorious enough, there’s a matching statue in Light’s Hope Chapel. Tirion, you bastard, we did all the heavy lifting, all you did was a backflip!

After spending a huge chunk of time attempting to work out a rotation (more on that in my next post), I logged off for a bit. While I was gone I had a revelation: just about everyone I know from Twitter was Alliance and therefore Horde-side was going to be awfully lonely in the beta. To increase my chances of maybe doing a few beta raids eventually, I bit the bullet and created a premade Alliance Paladin.

A female Draenei one.

So I did the set up dance with her. She is named Rhydach. Her hips do something funny when she walks. I don’t get it.

Yes, I feel dirty too. But it’s not my fault, Draenei was the only option for Alliance Paladin premades!

On the bright side, since I’m playing Cataclysm on Alliance side, it’ll feel a little fresher once the expansion pack comes out. Rather than if I spent the entire time on Horde side in the beta. In any case, after the set up I spent most of the rest of the day questing in Hyjal. Only took me about three and a half quest hubs to get to 81. Though, I’m guessing 81 to 82 will take a lot more experience.

Soloing as a tankadin was pretty straightforward. We still have a wide raft of abilities, and you’ll generally find yourself using them all except for Consecrate, unless you’re surrounded by a large group of mobs. Health was usually not an issue–I don’t recall dropping under 90% except for a few AOE situations (not being blockcapped/having the old block is a pain) and mana was definitely not an issue. I could Judge every 20 seconds and just about always have a full blue rage bar. It was pretty awesome, but also pretty mindless with regards to our primary resource.

As for our seconday resource, without a specific UI for it, or any addons, Holy Power is a pain to keep track of. I often found myself forgetting how many stacks I had and then having to squint at all my buffs until I remembered which icon was for Holy Power. Annoying, but obviously fleeting. Also, hitting Crusader Strike every third attack is not as huge of a pain as I expected it to be, and I generally had enough HP to keep up Holy Shield if I wanted to.

Of course, Holy Shield is weirdly bugged right now on beta. Sometimes I would hit it and get 45% block, sometimes I’d get 180%, and sometimes I’d get 1.5%. There was no consistency to the buff. I usually just used HP to pop Word of Glory after every mob and top myself off.

(Another sidenote: this is how I was specced at 81. I retrospect, I wish I diverted the point from PoJ and the two from E4E and put them in Divinity. I’ll explain why shortly.)

The Throne of Pain!

So the good news is dungeons require a lot more thought in Cata than they do in Wrath. The bad news is a normal dungeon was about as difficult as a TBC heroic. At least for now, I’m guessing it might be a bit overtuned (just going on a limb here).

I was in there for 90 minutes, and we only got the third boss. And I died 13 times. Sometimes instantly. That place is like a sopping wet meat grinder.

Every instinct in my body was telling me to attempt to tanking all the mobs, and yet as soon as I had two of one kind of mob on my, I would die. Or a wave of murlocs would rush past me, intent on eating the healer (they were tiny and dangerous, like Rot Worms on steroids) and so I’d pop Holy Wrath to aggro them all, and then break CC. Which would then release the mobs that would pulverize me into a fine paste.

Once we worked through the gauntlet hallway we eventually made our way to the first boss who at times felt almost like a raid boss. She has a channeled lightning attack that will do some serious damage to the tank (like around 18000) if not interrupted. She also had two “down” phases where she’d retreat into this whirlwind and three adds would come in the room. The casters would immediately need to be CC’d and the melee add picked up and burnt down. Then one at a time kill the casters before the boss re-aggros. Once we got the hang of it, it was an easy kill.

Huge change of the pace from the tank and spanks of Wrath!

We then ran back to the previous central room where a new boss suddenly appeared. We just ran in and pulled him, and I was promptly one shot (45k damage) by a channeled attack he did. Note to self: run out of it. That must have been a fun surprise for the healer.

The second go we dropped this guy, though it was getting a bit hairy towards the end as he kept giving me a move speed debuff curse, which then almost led to me getting caught by the one-shot attack. To be fair, I think the healer didn’t know I needed a decurse, and I definitely didn’t have the dexterity to type out “HALP” while running out of a Dark Fissure.

About at the 90 minute mark we cleared up to the third boss and got an attempt in, but by that point one of the dps had to go and the group fell apart.

Overall it was a pretty intense dungeon, though I’m sure it’ll be easier once Cataclysm comes out. There’s not way they’ll leave an entry dungeon that overtuned. That said, I really like the design that I encountered in there: I have the threat to tank all the mobs, but if I try, I’ll go splat. I like having to use some CC and think about pull execution. Though this makes me mourn for the kinds of pugs that would bang their heads against such a design on live.

Just to speak a little about threat–I didn’t find I was having much of any trouble with it. I know this is level 81 and an entry-level dungeon, but single-target threat was easy mode. I don’t think I ever dropped on under 100% threat on a mob I was intentionally tanking, at least according to the stock UI. After that run I think I have a much, better handle on the new “rotation” which doesn’t seem as counter-intuitive. But, like I said, I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Survivability on the other hand was tenuous at times. I don’t know if it was the healers or if I was doing something wrong, but it felt like a raid at times where I was three hits away from death. If I was ever tanking more than two mobs I’d chain cooldowns and ride a stream of invectives to victory. It was seat of your pants in there.

Lastly, I have a log of the dungeon run if anyone is interested. There was a hunter, mage, fury warrior, and resto druid in the group as well.