The time has come Blizz: give us stances

Warrior tanks go into defensive stance. Druids shift into bear form. DKs apply frost presence.

Paladins do not have an equitable ability (Righteous Fury is not, at a nuts and bolts level, the same).

Ghostcrawler, want to differentiate the three Paladin specs and make it so each cannot dabble into the realms of the other two? The only way is by forcing Paladins to choose a stance.

Make Devotion Aura the tank stance. Fold RF’s threat multiplier into it, make certain abilities being exploited by Ret/Prot or Holy/Prot pvpers dependent on Devo Aura, like Avenger’s Shield. Also, take Divine Protection off Forbearance when using Devo Aura.

Retribution Aura becomes the dps stance, with a huge damage multiplier (along with a baseline damage nerf to balance the two out), and attach a threat reduction to it. Concentration Aura becomes the healing stance, with a healing multiplier (and again, a baseline healing nerf). Normal aura buffs given to party/raid members still apply.

I have no idea how to square this with resistance auras, however.

Basically, the idea is, if you want to segregate the specs, then do it like you do with every other class. Make Paladins choose their role, rather than neutering our abilities and watering down our capabilities to make up for imbalances. It’s clear being a “utility” class means little or nothing anymore, so let’s go whole hog and fix this nonsense once and for all.

I fear for LoH’s safety

We may have dodged the bullet last week, but there’s no denying that Lay on Hands is clearly in Blizz’s crosshairs. Hell, Pallies in general are. Damocles’ nerfbat is dangling precipitously above our heads.

Ghostcrawler recently asserted in a thread on the forums that “for most of the other hybrids, picking a role in a fight is much more of a commitment.” And approvingly quoted a poster who said that Paladins differ from other hybrids in that our healing capabilities are much more baseline.

Fair enough, but this peek into GC’s thought process bodes ill for our future situation. It appears that the developers intend to differentiate Paladins a lot more based on what spec they are. That is,

if you are up against a Holy paladin, you should know that one of your greatest challenges should be dealing with their capacity to heal. If you are up against a Prot paladin, you should be concerned with their capacity to take hits. If you are up against a Ret paladin, you should be concerned with how much damage they should deal. You should not, generally, be nearly as concerend [sic] about the Prot’s ability to self-heal or the Ret’s ability to tank you.

What does this mean for us? For starters: LoH doesn’t have a very bright future ahead of it. Because it is such a massive heal, it’ll probably be dumped deep into the Holy tree, much like Spiritual Attunement was back in 3.1. Our spellpower might be further nerfed so our off-healing capabilities can’t even begin to compare with Holy’s, and our damage dealing will surely be dealt a body blow for a nice double whammy of neutering Prot pvp and pve tps in one fell swoop.

Concerning my first assumption, to drop another quote bomb, GC went on to explain that they don’t consider the long cooldown on the ability (or the inability for it to be used in Arena is a balancing factor). Rather,

We don’t think “Sure I can heal myself for 25,000+ health as a dps spec or 50,000+ health as a tank, but not very often,” is balanced. Abilities can be unbalanced even if overall a character is not.

Gulp. Notice he specifically invalidated LoH for Ret and Prot in that example? Nice knowing you, old friend. Tell the Holy Tree we said hi.

The future of Paladins is probably this: Holy will have access to impressive self-heals (including LoH) but have little damage output, Prot will be a damage sponge but unable to kill anything or heal itself (basically, just slowly die in pvp), and Ret will be a paper tiger (good luck getting them to reverse the burst nerfs once you guys are mortal).

Normally, I wouldn’t mind this “recalibration” of the specs, but like most balancing matters, Blizzard will fail at the follow through. They have a bad habit of nerfing or buffing X to make up for Y, and then when they finally remove Y as a balancing factor, they don’t put X back to where it used to be. When Prot doesn’t have a third “cooldown” anymore, once LoH is gone, what is going to be the balancing factor to remove disparities?

Side question: does Blizzard even consider LoH a tanking cooldown? Admittedly, the reason I keep putting the word “cooldown” in scare quotes is because the classification is scurrilous at best, considering LoH is used more as a panicky free-heal and usually contributes to overhealing more than anything concrete. Still, the question is, do they factor its existence into the equation at all for us?

It’d be nice to get an answer on that.

To return to my previous point, another example: Blizz decided Ret was too bursty, which rubbed up against their survivability, and made it so their damage ramped up (expecting that they were going to live that much longer, so a ramp-up was justifiable). If Ret’s survivability craters, are they going to shift back to a bursty dps model? Of course not.

If I seem overly pessimistic, it’s because I am (pessimism is a bad habit of mine). Blizzard has a knack for going overboard, and I can just see them “recalibrating” our class and badly handicapping us as a result.

The mask slips!

Ghostcrawler shows his true colors:

We agree with Communism.

Better dead than balanced!

How the other half tanks

To do something a little different, my post today is a brief interview with Demogar, my co-tank and brother-in-arms. Demo was recently served with a 3-day suspension from the WoW forums for what I can only assume was trolling. As you can imagine, he has some strong opinions on the state of tanking today, haha.

This is a bit of a fluff interview though, just to introduce the guy you’ve only seen in taunting comments and raid recaps to the wider audience of this blog’s front page.

1. Tell use a little about Demogar: when did you create the character,
what spec did you level as?

Demogar was actually created solely as something to do when I wasn’t helping a friend level his first toon on my Mage alt. I never intended to play him past level 20 but the mechanics of the class got its hooks in me. I leveled as Fury until level 61. A healer friend of mine begged me to tank for him but I was terrified of the responsibility. After several terrifying dungeon runs I found my footing and a passion for the game I had never known before.

2. What’s your raid tanking experience?

I played but never really got into raiding pre-BC outside of a few Molten Core and ZG runs of my old Warlock. I took some time off after BC launched then when I came back and leveled Demo I seemingly missed the boat on getting into a raiding guild. The guild I did get into spent the expansion running Kara and failing at early ZA. I went to another guild and did a little bit of Hyjal and SSC but nothing serious. Both guilds I tanked for but the Kara guild I was main tank.

3. What was your biggest raiding defeat? Biggest victory?

Excluding current content I would have to say working with my old guild to clear Kara and finally killing Nightbane… the biggest defeat was seeing how badly they performed in ZA and how we were never going to evolve any further. Including current content definitely 10 man heroic ToC is what I am most proud of and Yogg-Saron is my biggest disappointment.

4. What’s your favorite part of my tanking? :P

I think we have a good rhythm tanking together. You are as focused and committed to your role as I am. We each bring something different to the table and compliment each other well. You are able to herd adds together and hold them better than I can by far and are always on the spot with raid utility, whether it be Divine Sacrifice or Hand of Sacrifice on me when I need it. Tanks sometimes tend to butt heads and compete with each other, a problem you and I have never had. Your mind is always in the game and you’re always prepared and ready to react when something doesn’t go exactly as planned.

5. In 7 words, sum up your current feelings of the state of warrior
tanking. You are excluded from using the words “nerf” and “paladins”.

Slightly behind, very ignored, still VERY capable.

6. What do you think is the biggest misconception Paladins have about
Warrior tanks?

I see a lot of people think that Disarm and Spell Reflect are useful raid tools when they are in fact near worthless in a raid setting. There is some trash I can reflect tank and a couple bosses I can disarm but generally they don’t count toward anything in a raid environment.

7. Name the biggest change to tanking you’d like to see in Cataclysm
(non-class-specific).

I would love to see a heavier emphasis on bosses with tricky mechanics over bosses that just hit like a truck. I think Twin Val’kyr are easy but they are a lot of fun because it is all about execution. It would also be nice to see gear options that are viable aside from stam stacking. It was nice when we used to have to balance our stats out to be more well rounded rather than just walking HP pools.

8. How many tanks, ideally, do you think a 25man raid should require?

I think they either need to have all encounters require two tanks or have them all require three. If they change it up a lot then you need to not only have two very well geared main tanks but also some very well geared DPS with very good tanking gear. That isn’t always easy to do. I personally like two tanks but I don’t care either way as long as they keep it consistent.

9. What do you think is a better system: high avoidance with
harder-hitting bosses, or lower avoidance but more, smaller hits?

I prefer low avoidance with smaller more predictable hits. I don’t think the difficulty of the encounter should be determined just on how much gear the tanks and healers have. I do think bosses should certainly hit hard but not as hard as they have been.

10. T13/14 in Cataclysm: How much hp unbuffed is a warrior tank going to
have? Make your prediction now!

It all depends on how much HP we have in full heroic T10 before I can compare fresh 80 HP to fully geared. But since they say that the Defense in the item budget will probably going to become stamina I would say possibly 80k in full heroic T14.

One step closer

Last night was heroic 10man night, which has quickly become my favorite night of the raiding week. Small group, more relaxed vent, loot I can use, a nice challenge; all factors that add up to heroic ToC-10 being a great time. Last night was no exception, even with two folks that have never seen an Anub kill, we were clearly on fire.

During Beasts we unfortunately wiped on Icehowl because we had two instances where the yeti hit someone that didn’t strafe fast enough. Once we regrouped I was forced to teach some folks how to strafe and imparted the wisdom of Stoneybaby’s awesome “Small Points” post. The next time we downed Beasts when everyone was on top of their game for the furball.

Jaraxxus was generally easy and we one shot him. Then on Champs we had what was probably the easiest comp ever: Enhancement Shaman, Rogue, Holy Priest, Tree Druid, Warlock, Mage. Burnt down the Shaman first, then the Rogue, then the Warlock. After the scariest dps was dead we doubled back and finished off the two healers, then put the Mage out of his misery.

Twins were similarly easy. (No boots, though, makes me a sad pally.)

As you can gather, I think it’s fair to say we’ve got the hang of the place overall.

When we dropped down to face Anub we were at 49 attempts on the clock. Mad Skill was so close we could taste it.

However (and not really this person’s fault) we brought a new guy that night who really hadn’t seen an Anub kill and had to learn our two-heals/north-south strategy on the fly. Two wipes later and I’ll admit I was getting very stressed. I felt that progression kill slipping away from us.

47 attempts left, third try on Anub and we executed the strategy perfectly. People ducked and dodged as needed, adds died fast, and Anub as well in short order. The “A Tribute to Mad Skill” achievement flashed on our screens. No 245 Ardent Guard, but I was still jubilant. It was a great victory for the guild.

Considering that each wipe that night was either due to (1) dopiness, or (2) not knowing the fight. Both easy things to overcome. Insanity will be ours very soon, I’m sure.

Now, to step back a bit from the warm glow of victory, let’s talk a little drama. There are some malcontents in guild that were complaining that they weren’t being taken to the heroic 10man and that only the “Inner Circle” was being invited. I need to address this–er, heroically, where they’ll never read my response. Their complaints are hogwash.

For one, to address the more explosive “Inner Circle” charge, we’ve rotated in folks every week to the point where we’ve now taken at least 20 different people in there. And we’ve invited others who were not able to go. There is no Inner Circle being taken week after week.

Anyone who’s done this raid will I’m sure sympathize that you can’t carry someone doing 3k dps through it just to be “fair”. I’m a bit of a black-hearted jerk perhaps, but my position is you have to earn your spot in a top-of-the-line run by being the best at your role. The reason that some people aren’t being invited is because they can’t perform at the level needed to succeed in there. We issue invites based their performance according to logs from that week’s 25man raid.

Do 6k dps and you’re probably going to an invite. Do 3k and spend more of the raid disconnected? Not so much.

There’s a part of me that feels bad about having to exclude folks like this, but on the flip side I have a responsibility to the guild and the other 9 people in that raid to give them all the tools they need to succeed. An underperforming remora of a raider is not going to help bring any success.

It’s not Insanity, but I’ll take it

Dodge nerfed 20% in ICC

Revenge of Sunwell Radiance!

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets.

So upon stepping into Icecrown I will have 5.09% dodge. Oh my.

Not to mention block capping will also be impossible in there.

You know what that means, right? MOAR STAM! Rather than marginalizing effective health as a tank metric, they’ve made it just about the only tank metric left. Good job, Blizzard.

Oh, and even better! Because we’ll have more consistent, predictable damage–rather than the occasional 20k hits–block will become that much more potent a mechanic. Block tanks always thrive against smaller hits.

Funniest line in Blizz’s statement?

Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.

I’ve heard that before!

Edit: At second inspection, this explains the crazy dodge in our t10 4pc bonus.

You are what you eat

While as easy as it may be to leech for the saps that bring Fish Feasts to the raid (just kidding–valuable raid service!), FF is the not the best option for any post-wipe munchies. Straight attack power and spell power are two of our weakest threat stats, and if you’re aiming to boost your tps, that’s not the way to go. Not to mention that stamina is not a factor thanks to all foods having the same amount. As such, you’re really eating buff food for that secondary stat, but which stat to go for?

First, let’s take a look at what you can use to sate that gnawing pre-attempt hunger:

Dragonfin Filet: Provides 40 strength, which works out to 20 Block Value (26 with Redoubt) and 80 attack power/28 white damage dps, along with 24 spell power.

Blackened Dragonfin: The 40 agility from this food imparts .67% dodge (before diminishing returns), .67% crit chance, and 80 armor. Great triple dip stat food.

Worg Tartare (or Snapper Extreme): Gives 1.22% chance to hit. Excellent choice for closing the gap on the melee hit cap.

Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak: The 40 expertise rating from this food translates to 4.9 expertise skill, or .82% reduced chance to have your attacks dodged or parried.

So, what is the best for threat?

Dragonfin Filet because strength triple dips as a threat stat. It gives you an increase to your dps directly, then more BV (increasing your Shield of Righteousness damage), and finally adds some spell power for icing on the cake. In fact, according to an analysis that Theck ran, Dragonfin Filet is worth 126 tps. That’s 30 tps more than its nearest competitor (Fish Feast).

And, what is the best for survivability?

Blackened Dragonfin for sure. You get avoidance and mitigation, all in one package. It’s the only real choice.

How to use Divine Sacrifice in 3.3

Save this macro (from Theck) now, and just drop it on your bars once 3.3 hits:

/cast Divine Sacrifice
/in 0.5 /script CancelUnitBuff(“player”,”Divine Sacrifice”)

Click only once, and thanks to the recent PTR change to Divine Guardian you’ll put up a 20% raid damage reduction without taking any damage:

• Divine Guardian: This talent no longer increases the amount of damage transferred to the paladin from Divine Sacrifice. Instead it causes all raid and party members to take 10/20% reduced damage while Divine Sacrifice is active. In addition, the duration has been changed to 6 seconds, however the effect does not terminate when Divine Sacrifice is removed before its full duration.

3.3 is such a kick in the teeth.

“Lay on Hands can no longer be cast on yourself.”

Wat?

Edit: My rage has subsided a tad. Here’s my beef: LoH has been self-castable since day one of WoW. Now, all of a sudden, they decide it’s overpowered. Why?

The obvious answer is pvp QQ, of course. This has survived four years of pve without being considered a detriment to balance, and now suddenly at the fever pitch of anti-Pally QQ they decide to bring down the nerfbat? I don’t buy that the two are not connected.

And of course, the unintended consequences are legion. One: LoH has always been considered an unofficial Oh Shit button for tanking. One of our only two mainline clickable cooldowns, nerfed to the ground.

Moreover, this was used as a fake-innervate by Holy Paladins. No more.

A life saver while levelling? Ha! Nice try, you OP bastards.

Like they say, to the ground.

Edit2: lawl, this was an April Fool’s Joke once.

Edit3: Ghostcrawler weighs in. No nerf… for now.

I wouldn’t worry too much on the Lay on Hands change at this point. I don’t want to promise we won’t change the spell for 3.3, but our intent was to revert the others only change before it went out to the PTR, which is why we didn’t patch note it. We have already changed it back on our local builds.

The paladin class isn’t just supposed to be for support anymore, but at the same time, the original intent for many paladin abilities was to help the group. Over time however they have contributed into making the paladin into a “one-man army,” able to play offensively, defensively and heal without say the stance changing or shapeshifting or sometimes event talent specialization required of other classes. Many of the LK balance problems we’ve had with the class are because of that core issue.

With that said, we’re just not sure a Lay on Hands change really accomplishes much from a balance perspective, while it feels bad to lose such an iconic ability. We just don’t think the bang for the buck is there on this change, which is why we reverted it. But I’m not going to promise we won’t touch it.

I guess that’s reassuring(?). Nonetheless, we live to self-LoH another day.