Some tanking nerfs in 4.0.3a

This was initially announced yesterday when they “clarified” blocking in Cataclysm and announced some tweaks to Holy Shield and our mastery. Then, a whole new raft of changes hit the fan. Here’s everything, plus commentary:

Holy Shield will be changed to increase block value by 10% (40% total) instead of increasing block chance by 15%. Since this will cause Mastery to become more valuable, the amount of block granted by Mastery will be reduced to 2.25% block chance per point of Mastery, down from 3%.

Paladin tanks are not intended to go cap block as fast as they can. It’s fine if you want to do that, but we don’t treat it as “the new defense cap” and we don’t balance paladins assuming they have a 100% block chance. That is something the community identified as being not only possible, but likely, and one of the reasons we changed the way block works for paladins.

So we’re looking at a total loss of at least 21% block from what we have now. 15% from Holy Shield no longer provided block chance, and 6% from the free 8 Mastery skill you get for training the stat. That is a huge, huge loss. And I’m sure will make it fairly impossible to block cap until the last tier or the one before it, looking at ilevels.

Which, honestly, is not a bad thing. Sure, having a constantly up 30% damage reduction is fantastic, but that’s not something we want to be balanced around by default. It’ll result in harder hitting bosses and will force a move away from the stated goal of a tank being able to take a lot more hits before death.

Sounds to me, honestly, like they’re retooling tank damage across the board as Cata draws closer. Reports from the beta are that tank damage was ridiculous, comparable to the 2-hits-and-you’re-dead Wrath philosophy, so they’re nerfing tank damage reduction and reducing damage in tandem.

Guardian of Ancient Kings — Damage reduction changed from 60% to 50%. Cooldown still 2 minutes (talented). Duration still 12 seconds.

Probably part and parcel with the reduction of boss damage. You don’t need as much damage reduction if the boss isn’t hitting for as much. Of course, hold onto your salt until we see the content ourselves and can judge accordingly.

It’s over ni… I’m not making that joke.

Thanks to everyone out there that heeded the call to flaunt their best Shield of the Righteous crits from Festergut. I have below all the screenshots I received ordered from lowest to highest (for dramatic effect, natch). In two months don’t forget to look back and think of how great it was when ShoR didn’t have lowered AP scaling, and the sky was the limit of what we could achieve.

Gathorc of Eitrigg-US — 77,142

Palatinus — 79,991

Chuckf — 81,665

Cors of The Scryers-US — 83,578

Joachim of Moonguard-US — 89,474

Festenia — 95,600

Asur of Dark Iron-US — 96,754

Guisado — 100,337

Smashnheal of Grizzly Hills-US — 104,400

Siegfred — 106,222

Numee of Malygos-EU — 114,100 (!!!)

Thank you everyone who sent in their screenshots. Those are some incredible numbers!

I’ve had it up to HERE with this achievement

Neck Deep in Vile, how I loathe thee. Thankfully, the first batch of it is done. Six more folks to go and everyone in the raid core will have their drakes.

There’s really not much to say about the achievement other than what a huge pain it’s been for us. We typically have very melee-heavy raids, and last night was just about the most ranged/casters we’ve ever had going. And this is including the two healers I made go dps offspec.

We had a few close calls, at one point getting LK to 11% when the achievement was failed, forcing all to quickly cascade of the edge in hopes that dots wouldn’t push him over. Thankfully, we died to fight another day.

Last night was also the first time since the patch we’ve downed Heroic Sindragosa, thanks to various difficulties in the previous weeks (for example: half the raid not being able to see the swirl of a Frost Bomb in the distance).  The biggest issue was Frost Breath continues to not fall off once the timer elapses (instead, just ticking off a stack), unlike prior to 4.0.1.

In the past, I’d tank Sindy from start of the fight to the first tank swap in the sub-35% phase. Last night, Ana and I had to switch off every air phase so that going into P3 I wasted burdened by 6 stacks of the speed debuff. Not a huge deal, but an annoyance nonetheless.

Anyway, unpleasantness aside–drakes! Woo.

Nerf pallies, or something

Like Voss said.

Here’s my entry for the ShoR crit contest (though I’m not really participating):

104,692 damage. The stuff dreams are made of my friends. And that was with normal tanking gear, no dps pieces! Just lined up all my ducks in a row (9 stacks of Gaseous Bloat, almost-max Vengeance, wings popped, Sacred Duty proc) and fired.

I even let Ana tank first too! (Hence the faux-gquit, and the horse head I woke up to in my bed this morning.)

For my victory lap I murdered Antigen’s mage’s eponymous Frost Elemental.

There can only be one.

MMO-Champ also has the latest beta changes from build 13221. They seem to be missing the ShoR nerf wowhead is showing. Hrmm.

Update: ShoR was definitely nerfed.

We changed Shield Slam and Shield of the Righteous to do more base damage and scale less with AP. This was to fix a problem where numbers became absurdly large with a lot of AP, especially under the effects of Vengeance, dwarfing the damage done by druid or DK tanks. With these changes, a tank in heroic dungeon blues should deal the same damage with no Vengeance, but Vengeance will have less of an impact.

The coefficient for Shield of the Righteous was lowered from 120% to 60% at 3 Holy Power. The coefficient for Shield Slam was lowered from 75% to 60%.

But apparently Word of Glory was not.

We buffed Word of Glory base points for Holy paladins. We nerfed the Ret and Prot talents to keep it about the same for them.

Reminder: I want your ShoR crits!

Like I mentioned last week, I’m going to do a post on Friday with the screenshots of various ShoR crits people have sent to me from their Festergut attempts.

It being Tuesday, there are a lot of folks heading back into a fresh ICC tonight, and if you’re one of them, be sure to have that Print Screen button ready to capture that 5-6 digit crit (or off of Recount after the fact).  Festergut crits only, please, since that’ll be the best opportunity for you in ICC to get the craziest shield slam possible.

You can email them to me at rhidach [at] gmail [dot] com.

Good luck!

Blizzcon 2010

Well, where do I start? It was a pretty epic weekend, full of friends, WoW news, endless walking, and lots of laughs. Thinking back now and peeling back the layers of jetlag that are caked on my memories, I absolutely had a blast out there and cannot wait for next year–provided I have the opportunity to go again.

The icing on the cake was, of course, meeting some of my guildmates for the first time. I’d already met Cendra and Ildara before, but this was my first time seeing Anafielle, Gandy, Sheepindeath, Palehoof, Katmandu, and Amulgur. All great folks and they totally made the weekend for me.

From left to right: Ildara, Cendra, Sheepindeath, Gandy, myself, Anafielle. (Not pictured: Pale, Kat, and Amulgur, who were off doing their own crazy thing.)

I’ll spare you all a play-by-play of all four days I was out there, but there were some key moments I am compelled to share. Like on Thursday, I was following the progress of the badge pickup line through Twitter with some trepidation hearing of multiple hours spent in line. However our delay in getting over there (because we were waiting for Cendra and Ildara to fly in and drop off their stuff at the hotel) ended up rewarding us. When we finally got to the B hall to grab our badges, the place was nigh-deserted.

I can’t even fathom the unmitigated hell that must have been standing in that awful line for a long as so many must have.

Once we had gathered up our badges and our guildees, we trudged down the road to the Anabella hotel for the WoW Insider party. It was a lower key event than I thought it would be, with huge crowds stacked around the podcast table and whoever was yelling into a microphone. The bar lines were long but the drinks weren’t too expensive. I managed to sate myself on multiple G&Ts over the course of the night. Had a good time overall, since I prefer low key things.

Towards the end before the party ended, there was a huge commotion at the patio. Apparently Ghostcrawler had arrived and was immediately swarmed.

Ana managed to pull a conversation with the guy, and despite my best efforts wouldn’t act as a partisan in my quixotic quest to get a gap closer for Prot. Instead the two chatted briefly about Maintankadin while I stood 30 feet away and shouted over the din, “LONG ARM OF THE LAW FOR PROT!”

But not really.

The next morning I did my best to get everyone up and moving early so we could get in line pronto for the opening ceremony. Unfortunately, everyone afk’d for my ready check. After docking the raid’s DKP, I was able to motivate them to get into gear. On the walk down to the convention center, half the group split off to go get breakfast at some overpriced joint in Downtown Disney while the rest of us continued to the line. Once we had our spot near the fountain, we then proceeded to stand there for two hours, unaware that the line behind was extending to unholy lengths.

After about two hours of uncomfortable weight shifting, some dope dressed up as Risk Astley and poorly rickrolling the crowd with his iPod dock, various innuendo from Gandy, a parade of cosplayers whose shtick consisted of “I’m blond, scantily clad, and wearing blood elf ears!”, and all other kinds of craziness, the doors opened and the line started moving. We quickly got inside and grabbed some okay seats for the opening.

As you know, not much was announced for WoW aside a new charity pet from the online store. And they replayed the opening cinematic. Woo.

I then proceeded to spend most of the day in that hall, watching the various panels. Most of which were really interesting. As the day progressed and each panel ended, we moved closer and closer to the front of the room to the point where we were in the second clump of chairs from the stage, slightly to the left of center stage, in time for the live raid and costume contest/other contests.

The dance contest in particular was fantastic, and I say this as someone with a genetically predisposed lack of rhythm. The kid who did the gnome male dance was great, the trio who did the goblin female dance put on quite the show, only one of the male orc dancers was actually good, and the woman who did the female gnome dance made me all the more terrified of that benighted race. And, of course, the male undead dance. Poor guy, I was mortified for him.

Biggest disappointment of the costume contest: not watching a Draenei or Illidan cosplayer face plant on a ramp. Best costume: the “T4 warrior lfm for Kara”, that one took me back! (Except for the warrior part.)

That night we went to Bubba Gump’s for dinner and I briefly popped in to the meetup at the bar to say hi (once I had stuffed myself with a shrimp-based dinner), but by then a lot of people had already left. However, I did get to meet Ophelie of Bossy Pally, which was pretty cool.

The next day I resolved to not spend the entire day in that one room, so the goal was to just hit up the Class Q&A and then do some wandering and see everything I missed the previous day. So we skipped the cinematics panel at the beginning of the day, got some breakfast at Denny’s (in all its greasy glory), and then headed over to grab seats for the Q&A. The room was pretty full by the time we got there, but we snagged a row of seats in view of one of the giant monitors off to the side. Meanwhile, Ana ran off to get in the Q&A line before it was too late.

(If you can’t tell by now, she’s definitely the more social of the two of us!)

There were some really good questions and some amazingly terrible ones. As much as I hated the “lolpaladins” attitude present (and I’m sure I made a spectacle of myself clapping like a cymbal monkey any time someone asked a Pally question), the crowd was pretty well behaved. And when it wasn’t, it was primarily in response to the abject stupidity of some questions–like the first guy who had a raft of bizarre hunter complaints, or the DK that wanted to be buffed because nobody liked him in LFD.

The third question in or so was a really good one done by this fellow, asking about Grand Crusader and how worthless it is right now. Unfortunately, the devs side stepped the question, saying they’d buff the talent if need be. That’s all well and good, but they totally missed the point that the root problem is the rotation we have right now is so rigid there’s only one spot where Grand Crusader can feasibly go. As such, I’m suspecting their happy to keep 3-second CS where it is for some time, rather than fixing the rotation, which is pretty disheartening.

Another question got the devs to spill that in the near future we’ll have a talent that will make Divine Plea generate 3 Holy Power, giving us a full ShoR ready to go at the pull. That was great news!

Towards the end of the Q&A, Ana finally got her turn to ask her question. She stood up and asked the following:

Hey guys, this is Anafielle from the paladin blog, Righteous Defense, and I have a question about tanks in general. I was wondering if you were happy with the current implementation of Vengeance? Right now, … the way it’s working, you can run into an avoidance streak and you won’t get enough stacks; and it also punishes survival gearing to an extent because when you’re gearing for survival you’ll have less stacks of Vengeance. I was wondering if you were happy with the way that is?

It was a bit obvious at the time she got up there that Ana was a little nervous. Let’s be serious though, who wouldn’t be? I echo Antigen’s sentiment that “I would’ve been so nervous I would probably just said “Hi!” and excused myself.”

Personally, I don’t have anywhere near the cojones to get up in front of all those people and put myself at the mercy of what could be a very merciless crowd. I did my part by holding back the compulsion to sympathy-stress-vomit all over the Mullet in front of me.

The rest of the con was hardly as exciting. I spent the rest of our time there checking out the booths from afar (no thanks, lines!), the art gallery, hitting up the store, grabbing lunch, and doing some more wandering. At around 5:30 we ducked outside for the official Lightninghoof photo, only to find out they rescheduled the photo for an hour early and had already taken it. So, we took one of our own. Palehoof even paid the kid who took the photo with a loot card.

From there we broke off and went back to the hotel to drink beer, eat pizza, and shoot the shit. After a while, Ana and Gandy got wanderlust so they headed off for the after party. Apparently they didn’t make it back until 5 am the next morning and we had to retrace Gandy’s steps with a receipt from Denny’s time-stamped at 4:15 am. In any case, was relieved to learn after the fact that Palehoof was there to keep Gandy from trying to drunkenly Tricks someone, IRL.

And then of course yesterday we all bid our farewells to one another, wished safe travels, and scattered to the four winds, back to our respective homes and varying states of jet laggedness.

The plan is to roll with an even bigger crew next year. I hope that happens, Blizzcon was way too much fun to share with just 9 people from our guild. Can’t wait til next time.

Finding our footing once more

Up until that first pull of Heroic Marrowgar I was terrified that last night was going to be a repeat of the debacle that was the raid on Wednesday last week. The first time we tried Heroic Marrowgar last week I think I was two shot, ingloriously. The offtank followed suit with much haste.

Last night–much better! We had no problems dropping Marrowgar. In fact it felt like pre-4.0.1, except for dps was much higher, so the fight didn’t last as long. Then on Heroic LDW we had a somewhat clean one shot. With everyone’s additional health I’m sure that there were survivors to some unnecessary ghost explosions. I’m sure we wouldn’t have pulled it off that attempt if not for 4.0.1, but at this point I’m beyond caring about these externalities. I just want the night to go well.

And so it did. We pretty much rolled over everything in our path, cleanly one-shotting Heroic Putricide and only stalling at Heroic Sindragosa at the end of the night. With Put in particular I was convinced there were some boss damage hotfixes, because I was reduced to a paste by his normal mode last week, and yet last night I wasn’t taking that much of a beating. Lo and behold, there were.

Per the crab,

We’ve made some Icecrown and Halion changes already and we may need to make more.

He didn’t go into details but I’m certain that they nerfed boss damage in ICC and RS. On just about everything except for Sindragosa (who is still very truck-like in her damage) I was sitting pretty with very few “oh crap” moments, if any.

Last night was also a great chance to get more comfortable with the rotation and all our new toys. I’m much happier with 939 than I’ve been since it was first devised. It’s still annoying to CS every other attack, but the 9′s are not as locked in as they used to be (there’s some fluidity) to make the rotation require some thought. Plus, I’m really liking the choice presented by Shield of the Righteous and Word of Glory.

The former you use at the start to establish a threat lead, then once you’re comfortable with your position you can use Word of Glory to boost your survivability. A lot of times I found myself with a good 10% or so headstart on the dps and started popping the self-heal/absorb. I like any choice we get and any choice that rewards us for not choosing poorly. I think WoG is one of the those things.

Perhaps my favorite part of the night, though, was Heroic Festergut. Thanks to Vengeance and the the damage buff he slaps on the tank, I pulled off an 85,665 damage Shield of the Righteous crit. I’m sure I could have done much better with AW up, or some dps gear, though I was at least using my Bloodvenom Blade.

In any case, I close out my post with this demand: I want to see your crits. Email me screenshots of ShoR crits on your scrolling combat text or Recount, from Festergut. Your personal bests, the biggest number you can push. Next Friday I’ll do a post showing off the biggest ShoR crits I received. You can email your screenshots to rhidach [at] gmail [dot] com.

Housekeeping note! Tomorrow morning I’m flying out to California for Blizzcon. Blogging here will of course be light to non-existent, since Anafielle is also going to be there. However you can follow both of us and our Blizzcon-related ramblings on Twitter! Here’s my Twitter page, and here’s Anafielle’s.

Don’t gem Shifting Dreadstones anymore

Something not mentioned specifically in patch notes–but very important in case anyone missed the very hidden memo on this–agility doesn’t give armor anymore. One major by product is that (along with agility enchants no longer providing EH) Shifting Dreadstones are now an inferior gemming choice.

What made them so great before 4.0.1 was that agility was a triple-dip stat for us: dodge, armor, and crit/threat all in one tidy little package. While agility gems only provided 83% as much avoidance as the actual-dodge alternative, that 17% gap was easily made up (and then some) with the armor and threat. Now, obviously, the threat alone doesn’t make it as worth it.

As such, I definitely recommend you swap out that Shifting Dreadstones for Defender’s Dreadstones if you’re looking for more avoidance (and survivability), since parry is our only avoidance choice for purple gems.

Contrawise, if you’re looking for extra threat–and, it can be argued, survivability on Sindragosa–you can gem Guardian’s Dreadstones for expertise.

Personally I’m going to gem Guardian’s Dreadstones because that 60 parry rating I’ll be gaining will primarily go into the starving, gaping maw we call diminishing returns. At 85 it’s another story, but for now I’m opting for the expertise.

Hidden armor formula change brings the pain

It wasn’t enough of an insult that they gutted the precious armor from many of our pieces, but now it’s been confirmed in this terrifying thread on the tanking forums that the new armor formula for Cataclysm mobs and bosses has been retroactively applied to 81-83 mobs in WotLK content.

The old formula for damage reduction from armor was:

Reduction = Armor / (Armor + MobLevel * 467.5 - 22167.5)

And the new formula for Cataclysm is:

Reduction = Armor / (Armor + MobLevel * 2167.5 - 158167.5)

The rub is that the latter is now being applied to 81, 82, and raid boss creatures. Coupling this with the loss of armor itemization and other damage reduction talents, and you have some very vulnerable tanks in raid settings. I’m sure many of you have already seen some much higher numbers last week in Icecrown that you weren’t seeing two weeks ago before 4.0.1 dropped.

I’m very curious to see if there’s going to be a blue response to this or if we’re just supposed to deal with it until December. My understanding is a similar thing happened with 2.0 and 3.0, but I wasn’t raiding at the end of Vanilla or TBC, so I really can’t speak to that. Anyone have any idea?

In any case, I’m equally dreading and cannot wait for raid Tuesday to see how ICC25 goes again.

Update: GC posted in the thread and proceeded to completely miss the point

Agility no longer provides armor. Is that what you’re seeing here? I didn’t see that mentioned in the discussion, but I might have missed it.

Ah, nope.

Hopefully after receiving further responses he went to do some testing of his own. Maybe there’ll be a hotfix. Well, I doubt it, but a man can dream.

Ret finally helps for once, buffs, &c.

I know Retribution sometimes gets a raw deal around here, mostly because they’ve been an unending source of nerfs for us. Not to mention Holy Power is their fault, they stole our gap closer, and they smell bad. But–wait, where was I going with this?

Oh yes, well apparently hell froze over because for once they’ve done right by us, receiving a nice buff that has (as collateral “damage”) led to many of our abilities receiving a buff as well. Reports are that Crusader Strike, Holy Wrath, Hammer of Wrath, Judgement, and Censure were all buffed.

I can confirm that Hammer of Wrath in particular has done a complete 180 in terms of worth. Last night I was getting 14k crits from the spell, consistently. I think it’s safe to say we want to possibly start replacing Holy Wrath in 939 with Hammer of Wrath under 20%. Perhaps even Avenger’s Shield, numbers permitting.

In other news, the damage boost from the Crusade talent wasn’t affecting the splash portion of the attack, significantly hurting our AOE capabilities. Ghostcrawler has confirmed, though, that this was hotfixed last night. I’ll take it.

Lastly, I updated the 101 guide for 4.0.1. As always, please let me know if I forgot anything!