Addons I Love: AVR

When I set out to write this post I didn’t realize how behind the times I was with this addon. While AVR (short for Augmented Virtual Reality), in the version I have downloaded and setup, works with BigWigs for Icecrown boss encounters, apparently there’s been a shuffle with the mod making it so BigWigs is not longer needed. So, I’m thankfully spared detailing the dance you need to do to make this addon work with BigWigs while not clash with your bossmods of choice.

Instead, just grab the base AVR pack, and then AVR Encounters.

Now, I’m sure the functionality has remained the same, so let’s talk a bit about the Encounters side of this glorious piece of work. While you can use to the mod to put custom textures down on the ground for everyone in your raid to see (provided they have the mod), the really amazing part of this addon is how it streamlines (perhaps “dumbs-down” is a better word) certain boss mechanics.

For example, on Festergut, the mod will put a massive red circle under the spores.

This will show everyone the range of the spore so they can be sure to stand in its fungus-y embrace. For myself, as the tank and raid leader, it especially facilitates my job by making it take a split second to see if there are two spores in melee so I can order one to run out.

In the Rotface fight, AVR is a lifesaver. When a Big Ooze explodes and fires its slime rockets into the air, AVR will put red circles on the ground under where everyone was standing so you can guess where a rocket might hit the ground, making dodging them a cakewalk.

Once I get everyone in the raid to get set up with this addon, this will finally kill the much-maligned “Leg Shuffle” strategy. Rather than “everyone move to the other leg,” I can just say “don’t stand in the red circle, ya idjits.”

On Putricide, AVR is unfortunately a little buggy, but still a world of help. It will put a red circle under where a Malleable Goo is going to land.

Unfortunately, AVR only tracks one of three goos. But, at least it will mitigate some of the damage and help melee know in P3 if they’re about to get murdered by a goo falling on their heads. Alternatively, there’s an option for Putricide where you can have AVR put a red circle under everyone when Malleable Goo is cast, so people just need to not stand in a red circle to avoid getting it. That would work well, but I can see it being a headache for melee.

Lastly, we only saw a little bit of Sindragosa on Wednesday night (sidenote: first time we got to her, woo) but AVR demonstrated its effectiveness in all its glory for this fight. It puts a circle under every Frost Beacon so they can space themselves out and hopefully people won’t go into their circle and get frozen as well. We only got two tries in, but I can see this mod making the learning curve a lot more forgiving on this fight.

According to the AVRE page, they cover Marrowgar, Lady D, Blood Queen, and Lich King as well now. I can’t wait to try out these fights with the new version.

If you are using this mod I’d like to hear your impressions of it.

GC clarifies Prot concerns from the preview

Ghostcrawler hit the tank forums with a vengeance last night, clarifying not just his philosophy of class balance in this epic thread, but also issuing some dictums on some lingering concerns we had from our class preview.

First, on blessings:

Kings and Might can just be raid wide. There should be no need to target individuals. We’re trying to make sure there isn’t a circumstance where one dude would prefer the opposite buff to everyone else.

Bo Sanc could just be Kings with an extra mana component (for the paladin). We’re also considering making it a passive that gives the paladin mana and provides the 3% damage reduction buff raid-wide which is currently brought by Renewed Hope (the Disc talent).

The best design, I would think, would be to make two blessings. One is Blessing of Kings, the other is Blessing of Might. Clicking either will automatically buff everyone in the raid, ala Arcane Intellect. And, for Sanc, do exactly what GC suggested: roll the mana return into a talent and make Blessing of Sanctuary similar to the other buff except all it gives is the damage reduction.

That way it won’t be mandatory for dungeons like the mana-spring Sanc was (which lead to the ridiculous parade of tweaks and retweaks so we wouldn’t be gimped for having it up as our only blessing), and it’ll be a steady buff that we as Prot can bring to the raid.

Lastly, regarding Blinding Shield and AOE:

That attack could have a 10 min cooldown. I’m pretty sure we didn’t specify in the preview, so I’m not sure how you’d decide it’s better or worse in any situation. Maybe it has a 5 sec cooldown but we nerfed the threat generation from Holy damage so severely that paladins are utterly dependent on it now. I just don’t think we gave you the information necessary to draw that conclusion, and this is partially why we didn’t provide that information. :)

This is a good point by GC. People (myself included) often make the mistake of viewing any future plans through the lens of our current abilities and numbers. There’s no guarantee our AOE toolbox will be exactly the same as it is now, and frankly, I’d be shocked if it were. Adding Blinding Shield to our spellbook right now would make our AOE repertoire even more overpowered than it currently is. But, in the future, a lot will be changing that will probably make BS (ugh, worst acronym ever) a natural fit.

Say what you want about the crab, at least he lets us peek into his brain from time to time. And takes the effort to keep us in the loop on his design intents and appears to be assuaged by any concerns we bring up.

First look at Guardian of Ancient Kings, sorta

Like Blizz said, Guardian of Ancient Kings will have a “visual … similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by Paladins in Warcraft III.” After that was announced, a call went out for someone to find an example of that spell (I know I spent some time on google images trying to dredge one up).

On Twitter this morning, I saw that @ninjasuperspy had spotted a YouTube video of the W3 spell. Here it is:

Pretty cool! I’m getting more excited about this spell.

Cataclysm Paladin preview

My comments below in the blockquotes!

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

I’m torn by this spell. On the one hand, we’ve been told for month now that our aoe is too good and it needed to be toned down (and hell, it very well might), but adding another aoe spell to our toolbox seems counterintuitive. However, Blinding Shield does fill a much needed niche for us: a snap aggro aoe spell, like Warriors’ Shockwave.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Healing spell, meh. I guess it will be nice for crazy crunch times like Putricide Phase 3 where damage is just flying everywhere and every little bit helps. I’m sure it’ll be pretty weak baseline.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

Another damage reduction cooldown? Ok, I like it, and it’s a much better max-level spell than what Sacred Shield was at 80. Here’s hoping it doesn’t pop Forbearance, cause that would just be ridiculous. That mechanic needs to die a fiery death… but, I digress. I’ll always take new cooldowns, though this suggests to me a retooling of Ardent Defender, maybe, so we don’t have *too many* cooldowns.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

I like it. Makes sense. Probably will be part of our single-target toolbox.

Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

Wait, is this baseline or just for holy? Cause it already dispelled magic debuffs on friendly targets. The wording confuses me.

Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

Finally, the death of Pally Power!

Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

Will the damage component be baseline too, or will only Holy get to use it for damage? Having another ranged attack (RIP Exorcism) would be nice.

New Talents and Talent Changes (chopping this up –ed.)

One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds.

I don’t really care if they do this, aside from bubble hearthing, I seldom use Divine Shield for anything other than a fear break or debuff clear (eg, Impale).

[W]e want to add to this spec more PvP utility.

So give them an interrupt or gap closer guys. In Cataclysm, as far as we know, Ret will be the only melee dps class without an off-GCD interrupt. That doesn’t make any sense. Pass that to Prot while you’re at it. I’ll keep a candle lit for a gap closer as well.

We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target.

As long as the remember to update Sacred Shield to proc more than once per duration, this will be a nice change. I wonder if it’ll be Holy only, though.

Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we’re looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.

So for single target we’re adding Crusader Strike, and for aoe we’re adding Blinding Shield. This probably implies they’re gutting HotR and Consecrate still, making you not wanting to use them on bosses/single target. Rotations would turn into:

Single – Holy Shield, Judgement, ShoR, Crusader Strike, (maybe Holy Shock?).

Multi – Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, Blinding Shield, HotR, Consecrate, with some single-target stuff thrown in the holes.

Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.

Not having charges anymore would be nice, I approve. I wonder how they’ll balance this with our Mastery (see below).

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Protection

• Damage Reduction
• Vengeance
• Block Amount

Vengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.

Obvi.

Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.

I know this is Holy, but this was so poorly written I had to highlight it. Heal for more, orly?!

Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.

Again: obviously. Not much to say about this. I like our flavor of being the oft-blocking tank, so I approve.

My preview predictions

I think before the end of the day today we’re going to know what Cataclysm holds for us. Because of this I wanted to get my guesses out on paper, so to speak, so I can engage in some vigorous toldjasoing tomorrow–or, you know, emphasize I was just guessing and you really can predict this stuff.

The obvious stuff

Early strike – Shamans got their primal strike with the reasoning of making it easier to level as Enhance. This is great (though a bit late for my alt) and points to a design intent to bend the leveling difficulty curve so it’s not such a boring auto-attack-fest early on. Pallies among other classes definitely need more buttons to push at the beginning. A baseline Crusader Strike, trainable at level 1, would be great.

Indeed, Zarhym teased us with this post:

Here’s something:

…will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1…

I think that will be Crusader Strike.

An honest-to-goodness interrupt – Now that we cannot self-cleanse magic, having a short cooldown, off-GCD interrupt will be critical. I think it will happen. Also, name prediction: Rebuke.

Divine Storm nerf – They slapped down Whirlwind for Warriors, saying they didn’t want it used for single-target damage. DS will probably get the same treatment, 50% damage for all mobs.

A middle heal – Priests got a middle heal between Flash and Greater. I expect Holy will get the same to sit between FoL and HL.

Masteries

Damage reduction
Vengeance
Redoubt

Every other tank got the first two, so those are gimmes. For the third one, the design philosophy for the longest time has been Warriors block more damage, Paladins block more often. With the former getting Critical Block as their third mastery effect, I’m expecting the trend to continue with us getting an old talent redesigned to let us block more often. Personally, I expect that to be Redoubt, an effect that will proc for a set amount of more block chance, with the Redoubt proc to be affected by your Mastery stat. Money’s on the table!

The speculation

Close that gap! — This is my hail mary. It’s obvious that Blizzard is trending towards homogenizing tank toolboxes–the latest step being DKs eventually getting a Demoralizing Shout effect. One of the last differences between the tank classes is a gap closer. Warriors and Druids can charge, DKs can Death Grip, and we can… face pull. Or toss a shield and then face pull. Point being, I think this will change. Here’s my hope and dream for the lvl 85 spell:

Crusader’s Charge (level 85): The Paladin hurls themselves toward a targeted spot, discharging a burst of holy energy when they land. Each tree will tack on an extra effect to the spell. Holy will convert that holy damage into heals. Ret will silence up to three enemies when they land, in addition to holy damage. Prot will daze up to three enemies when they land, in addition to holy damage. Will share a cooldown with Avenger’s Shield.

This might be a little pie in the sky, but with the greater emphasis on movement, I think a gap closer is in the cards. Even one not as ridiculous as the ability I just outlined.

Seal of Command – With Crusader Strike (probably) going baseline, this will jump up to being Ret’s 41-point ability to keep it out of reach of Prot Pallies.

Heavy bubble nerf for Ret – The trend in Wrath has been make Ret less of a defensive dps (quote GC: “A defensive dps spec just doesn’t work”) and more of a straight and narrow, offensive dps. That means gutting their abilities to manage debuffs (aka, the Cleanse nerf), self-heal, and reduce incoming damage. I fully expect to see Divine Shield to either be removed entirely, or put out of reach of Ret Paladins.

Major revamp of Prot abilities – 969 will be taken out back and murdered. Our rotation will become something more of a priority system, with either a dot to manage or a proc to watch.

I have absolutely no idea what our 81/83 spells will be. And, I can’t even begin to guess. I’m sure one will be something healing oriented, and one damage oriented. I doubt we’ll see a damage reduction spell, especially with Sacred Shield at 80.

Now that I’ve ventured out into the great unknown, it’s Blizz’s turn. Come on guys, wow me.

Our preview bumped up

News from across the pond:

We are thankful for all the paladins and their patience in having to wait just a bit longer than others to get their Cataclysm class preview. While we had initially announced that we were planning to post the Paladin preview on Friday, April 16, we can now reveal that it will instead be posted on Wednesday, April 14!

I was going to do a post Friday morning with my predictions but I guess my schedule’s just been bumped up.

Update: Someone in that thread is saying the Taiwanese forums were indicating the US was getting their preview today… I am overflowing with doubt, but I’ll take the bait. I’ll be watching the Cataclysm forum.

The Dethroning

Well, we did it. The king is dead, long live the king. I want to talk a little bit about our kill, but also how we did the fight.

NB: We’ve only done 10man, so when reading this, please keep in mind this is from the ICC-10 difficulty.

Now, the Lich King as a fight isn’t that hard, especially in this, the age of the 10% pity buff. At it’s very core, the fight is all about movement and not standing where you shouldn’t be when you shouldn’t be there. Once everyone gets the hand of dropping Defiles and not giving the Valkyrs a head start on killing them, you’re pretty much golden. Phase 3, compared to Phase 2, is a joke. Once you find yourself blowing through Phase 2 with minimal difficulty you’re not going to be far away from a kill.

Phase 1

This phase is pretty straightforward. The maintank stands at the bottom of the stairs when Arthas runs down to give his little speech, positioning himself so the Lich King will be facing up the stairs. The OT (I did this) stands off to the side, next to the stairs. Throughout the phase, Drudge Ghouls will spawn around Arthas, three at a time. If you’re OTing you want to pick these up and bring them to you. The first batch is easy, have Seal of Command up, use HotR to grab their attention, drag them out. Later Ghouls, though, you’ll be standing too far away to easily pick up. A well timed Avenger’s Shield as they’re spawning can usually grab 2-3 (depending on if a bounce hits Arthas), but the most sure-fire way to handle the spawns is to have a Rogue tricks you and send them over.

On a set timer a Shambling Horror will spawn. These guys are nasty, they hit hard and do a pretty painful shockwave, so they need to be faced away from the raid. Like I said, I would stand next to the stairs, and then face the Horrors southward. These guys will also periodically enrage, so either have a Hunter tranq them, or use a Holy Wrath for the stun to slow the damage intake a bit.

During this phase the Lich King will put a disease on a random raid member. That person needs to then immediately run over and stand just about on top of a Drudge Ghoul, and then get cleansed, passing the disease off. We had a priest dedicated to this. She would go disc and basically spend the first phase bubbling people (Disc is OP for Infest) and watching for diseases.

Now, the way the disease works is it is first applied to a raid member with a set number of stacks. When it is cleansed off a player it immediately jumps to the closest person–another raid member maybe, or a Ghoul or Horror–and loses one stack. When the disease kills someone or something, it gains a stack. So, as OT, you need to keep an ever-increasing number of Ghouls in your pile, and your raid need to keep the disease bouncing among the Ghouls so it kills them, gains a stack (and potency), and then eventually infects a Horror and then kills them. No one should be dpsing the Horrors, just let the diseases eventually kill them.

Timing-wise, if your dps is good, you should be hitting the transition before the third Horror spawns. Getting the LK to 70% starts the next “phase”.

Transition 1

At this point Arthas will dash to the middle and everyone should take this as their chance to run for edge of the platform. We usually use the south edge of the map.

DPS will continue to ignore the Horrors as the disease finishes bouncing around and finally kills them off. A new mob will spawn in this phase, a Raging Spirit that will pop up next to the raider they copying, and if not picked up quickly probably two shot someone. Grab them quickly. Likewise, face them away from the raid, cause they do a “Soul Shriek” that will silence anyone caught in the path of the effect in addition to a lot of damage.

There will be frost orbs spawning from Arthas, pointing a beam at a random target, and then moving towards that person. Have a dedicated range to kill them before they reach their target. If they hit that person they will blow them clear off the Frozen Throne. There ain’t no battle rezzes where they’re going.

After three Raging Spirits, the transition will come to a close. Make sure nobody falls off the map when the outside edge of the platform collapses.

Phase 2

At this point, Nordic (the maintank in phase 1) and I switched jobs. He pulled any Raging Spirits off me and I ran to pick up Arthas. And yes, there will be a Spirit up at this point probably, so dps needs to get it down as soon as possible.

Now for the hard stuff.

Two biggest headaches this phase are Defiles and Val’kyrs. Defiles are like voidzones on crack. Standing in them makes them bigger, and an ill-placed Defile can easily break an otherwise flawless attempt. Val’kyrs, likewise, will spawn on a set timer, and swoop down to grab a raider. They will then move towards the outside edge of the platform and drop that unlucky soul off, unless killed first.

The key to this phase is making sure everyone is watch the counters. If a Defile is coming, ranged wants to spread out along the ring of the inner circle. Melee and the tank should move towards the circle as well. That way, when you know who is targeted, that person can run as far as they can to the outside edge of the platform and hopefully drop the Defile as far away as they can. Defile will not appear until the end of Arthas’ cast, so you generally have a second or two to get somewhere safe and deposit the Defile in a place where it won’t wreak havoc.

(If it isn’t evident by this point, this whole fight is very ranged friendly.)

For the Valks, you really, really want to be at close to the middle as you can when they are going to spawn. The more time they have to spend getting to the edge, the better for whoever is trapped in their grips. Work out a stuns rotation, so when the Valk spawns everyone doesn’t blow their stuns all at once (not to mention these guys have steep diminishing returns for stuns). The system we worked out last night was the warrior OT would stun the Valk first, then the Rogue would stun her. I’d follow up with Holy Wrath if needed, and if worse came to worse, I had Hammer of Justice as a backup. Chains of Ice is also terribly effective for these guys, a constant snare.

Where it gets interesting is sometimes you’ll have Defiles and Valks hitting at the same time (this will probably happen twice in Phase 2). These can b messy and everyone needs to be smart about where they’re standing at this point. Ideally you’ll have about a second between when someone gets picked up and when you find out who the Defile is targetting. In that split second, everyone needs to be ready to run for it when/if their name is announced while everyone else focuses on getting the Valk down.

The last thing I want to mention is Soul Reaper, which is something that hits like a truck but generally is not an issue on 10man. I honestly never popped a cooldown for it, nor did I even feel in danger from the effect. Then again, I did this fight in my hitcapped set (with about 1k less hp and 2k less armor than my EH set), so I really can’t be a good judge of how this might hit a person more geared just from 10mans. I apologize for not being able to speak to this better.

After back and forth between Valks and Defiles for a while, you’ll eventually get Arthas to around 40%. Watch your timers. Don’t push Arthas over to the next phase (at 40%) until the next Valk is dead. When that last Valk spawns, have everyone (even healers) follow it down to the edge. Even drag Arthas over with you all. As soon as the Valk drops (and hopefully not her cargo as well!), push Arthas over to 40%.

Transition 2

Now: RUN.

The reason you want to be at the edge is because once he hits 40%, Arthas will run to the middle and immediately start casting Remorseless Winter, which this time around will hurt a lot more. The first time we had this transition last night we lost two people in the hustle to the edge. When he first casts Remorseless Winter the outside edge will rebuild itself and give you a safe outer ring, so immediate beat feet to that outer ring and out of the effect. Divine Sacrifice is a great tool for this transition.

This transition generally is the same as the first one, with the biggest difference being you get four Raging Spirits. And you do not want these up during the next phase. Pop Bloodlust when the third one spawns and get those suckers down ASAP. Next phase starts a little after the fourth spawns.

Phase 3

This is it! You made it through Phase 2, everyone’s alive (hopefully). The hardest part is over, now you just need to hold it together and cruise to victory.

The key to this phase is spreading out. No more Valks, thankfully, but Defiles still happen. These though are pretty trivialized now that your healers and ranged can park themselves on those runes on the inner circle and be pre-spread out to drop Defiles. Just make sure your melee is fast on depositing their puddles and you’ll be golden on that account.

Two new things in this phase: every so often Arthas will attempt to Harvest the Soul of a random person, and Vile Spirits will spawn overhead and attempt to blow up people.

For Harvest Soul, the targeted raider will take a lot of damage and need to be kept alive so that they reach the end of the effect. If they die, the Lich King will gain a buff and probably kill your tank. If the target survives, they will be transported within Frostmourne where they’ll find Terenas Menethil doing battle with a Spirit Warden. The person inside Frostmourne has a critical job that can determine if a wipe will occur or not–but no pressure.

Healers need to heal Terenas and keep him alive, DPS need to attempt to kill the Warden. The Warden may channel a spell on Terenas that, if it reaches the end of the channel, kill him. This will give Arthas a huge buff and probably lead to tank death. To deal with this deadly spell, you have two options: either cleanse the effect off Terenas or interrupt the channel. As Paladins we can Cleanse or Hammer of Justice. Priests can cleanse, Shamans can wind shear, Hunters can (I’m told) distracting shot the Warden, Druids can shift to bear and bash the Warden, DKs can interrupt, Mages can counterspell, Rogues can interrupt easily, Warriors the same. Prepare your raiders beforehand so they are ready to do what they need to do to make sure Terenas makes it.

For those of us outside Frostmourne, we have the ever-important job of staying properly spread out. Those Viles Spirits that spawn overhead will do a lot of damage and we don’t want people getting hit by more than of them. Have a ranged that you trust assigned to marking a Vile Spirit to be burnt down and try to kill as many as you can before they descend. This is another good time for Divine Sacrifice: the Spirits do a huge chunk of damage when they explode, and two explosions will kill some of your squishier DPS.

Basically the entire phase is what I’ve outlined: staying spread out, keeping Terenas alive, killing as many spirits as you can and not eating too many explosions, and (of course) not screwing up the Defiles. Compared to Phase 2, this is a walk in the park.

The End of the Line
Spoiler warning if you want to save for yourself how the fight ends don’t read past this point!

You are warned!

When it comes down to 10%, Arthas will give a little taunt and then cast “Fury of Frostmourne,” instantly wiping your raid. Don’t panic, that wasn’t the enrage. And, for the love of pete, don’t release. Make sure no dopey raiders instinctively reach for that release button.

Congrats, you basically just won the encounter. And now for the fun part!

The Lich King will deliver a blathering soliloquy while Tirion presumably rolls his eyes. After he finishes his dissertation, Arthas is silenced by Tirion, who breaks out of his frosty cage (great timing guy) and then does some crazy acrobatics, flipping over Arthas and somehow destroying Frostmourne with the Ashbringer (our lvl 85 spell, Holy Backflip?). Souls then rush out of the sword, lifting Arthas up into the air.

Then, the sweetest words you will ever see in WoW flash on your screen: “Terenas Menethil would like to resurrect you.” Accept and get back up. Basically 10% to 0 is a free for all, just go nuts on Arthas and enjoy the freebie. Once he hits 0, Arthas falls to the floor and the cinematic begins.

Now, quickly ESC out, ninja the loot, and make a break for it while everyone’s enjoying the movie. (But not really.)

Better Late Than Never Friday, 4/9/10

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

best paladin tank enchant waist 3.3

Well, technically the only waist enchant is the Eternal Belt Buckle. If you’re an engineer though, you have two supplementary choices for some additional AOE damage. Using the Frag Belt or Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator tinkers on your belt (stacks with the buckle) can give your big pulls a little more oomph. The former obviously summons a bomb for you (with a neat little stun) and the latter can set off an Explosive Decoy for a chunk of physical damage. Both pretty handy.

nightmare tear does it give 10 to dodge also?

No, but it does give 10 Agility, which translates to some dodge. Though, not as much as 10 Dodge Rating would give.

glyph of judgement or command low level

Command is pretty nice at low level for the free mana it gives. That’ll make the early levels much easier to suffer through when going OOM is a constant, looming shadow.

sindragosa parry haste

Sindra does indeed parry haste (confirmed in this thread). This shouldn’t be much of a worry for two reasons: her breath is her biggest source of damage rather than her cleave, and dps will die if they sit in front of her, so you don’t need to worry about a clueless warrior causing you trouble, he won’t be up for long.

what kind of damage is putricide dealing? amplify magic

To the raid it’s either Shadow or Nature damage, depending on the attack. Your tanks will be taking a huge chunk of Physical damage from Putri’s melees, but even then there’s a lot of magic damage (especially in phase 3) and you don’t want to risk a tank gibbing ruining your attempt. I would recommend against amplify magic, honestly.

can i exchange my voa sanctified for emblems and mark?

Ye gods no.

does armor penetration stack with hammer of the righteous?

The damage is Holy, so it’s already penetrating armor.

does judgement proc seal of command cleave?

It does if you have at least one point in Judgements of the Just. It isn’t the judging the procs the cleave, it’s the application of the JoJ debuff. Probably a bug, but I’m not complaining.

festergut melee parry gib?

Festergut has parry haste turned off, so there is no danger of that.

Dreamwalker, et al.

Long overdue, but we finally took some time out of our busy schedules to put serious tries on Dreamwalker. Now that BQL was dead and that notch added to our progression belts, we wanted to fall back and do an easier encounter we could have done a while ago. It took us a few tries to get Dreamwalker down (well, up) because we had to figure out the optimal places for tanks, the dps spread, healer roles, etc. The last attempt went pretty went, and I’m happy with the efficacy of our kill.

One thing that stood out to me was how fast the fight goes towards the end. That is, it’s slow going from start to 75%, but after that the healers are accumulating more and more stacks, and one second you notice it’s at 90% and people are yelling for the Pallies to throw on LoHs, then suddenly it’s at 100%. Dreamwalker then stands up and melts all the Scourge. I don’t know why we waited this long to kill her.

And the biggest hurdle we probably had was communication. The Blazing Skeleton would sneak up on one side, get five ticks off and it would be game over. The last few attempts we got really good at knowing when they were coming (a mage would call out right before they spawned) and then people would screech when they made an appearance on their side. People would rush over and drop it with one or less ticks of waste being laid.

I gotta say, I’m pretty psyched that we went from being unable to kill Putricide–or any other wing boss for that matter–to convincingly being able to farm Putricide, and having the option of saying “we know we can kill BQL, but do we want to go try out Sindragosa?” Options! I love ‘em.

Lastly, this goes without saying. My guild’s healers are pretty awesome. They had a great system down, handled their own assignments in their own channel, and I knew I didn’t have to give a second thought to if they needed guidance assigning people to a role.

Oh, holy grip

For months now Zilga, one of the healing priests, has been saying the only thing she wanted in Cataclysm was a holy grip so she could “pull the dumbasses out of the fire.” While driving to work today I got caught in a traffic jam so I whipped out my phone and hit up twitter to see if the priest preview was ever released. I then saw they actually did add a holy grip, the Leap of Faith, and could not stop laughing. Zilga, got the lotto numbers?

Hints of Pally changes in the so-far released previews?

I’m going to issue the following predictions based on what we’ve seen in the previews for Shamans, Priests, etc.

1. There’s going to be an early attack like the “Primal Strike” that shammies are getting. Some kind of baby Crusader Strike, if they don’t just move that attack earlier in the Ret tree.

2. We’re getting something like the Warrior’s Vengeance Mastery:

Vengeance: This is a mechanic to ensure that tank damage (and therefore threat) doesn’t fall behind as damage-dealing classes improve their gear during the course of the expansion. All tanking specs will have Vengeance as their second talent tree passive bonus. Whenever a tank gets hit, Vengeance will give them a stacking attack power buff equal to 5% of the damage done, up to a maximum of 10% of the character’s un-buffed health. For boss encounters, we expect that tanks will always have the attack power bonus equal to 10% of their health. The 5% and 10% bonuses assume 51 talent points have been put into the Protection tree. These values will be smaller at lower levels. Remember, you only get this bonus if you have spent the most talent points in the Protection tree, so you won’t see Arms or Fury warriors running around with it. Vengeance will let us continue to make tank gear more or less the way we do today – there will be some damage-dealing stats, but mostly survival-oriented stats. Druids typically have more damage-dealing stats even on their tanking gear, so their Vengeance benefit may be smaller, but overall the goal is for all four tanks do about the same damage when tanking.

We’re so getting that too.

3. Warriors get Critical Block as their third-tier Mastery ability. Likewise, I think we’re getting a Redoubt like effect where a proc will give us extra block chance. The proc rate will make it over time reduce damage as much as Critical Block would.

4. I’m still holding out hope for some kind of gap closer. I strongly hoped that we’d be given Heroic Leap as our lvl 85 spell, but I guess Warriors are getting that (the jerks), foiling my initial prediction. Still, Ret suffers in pvp from having no gap closer, and we remain the only tank that can’t immediately zip to a mob or bring it to us. I think that’s going to change.

13/52/6, the (situational) max survival spec?

Bored, I decided to ogle the armory profile for Lazeil, the prot paladin who tanked Paragon’s Heroic Lich King-25 kill. I wanted to see what this person was doing to succeed in such an environment. One thing that stood out was Laziel’s second spec, a 13/52/6 protection setup.

The major upside of this spec seems to be how much survival it affords–Divinity for extra heals (a boon in this, the age of trickle-down deaths), Improved Lay on Hands for an extra cooldown (probably more useful to back up an offtank thanks to Forbearance), and Aura Mastery to boost Devo Aura to give 2410 armor (basically like popping 2/3 of an Indestructible Potion every 2 minutes) or boost the resistances of Fire/Shadow/Frost Aura. On top of this, Glyph of Salvation is worth a Forbearance-free 20% damage reduction cooldown, with obvious downsides.

LoH-related sidenote: While researching this post I found this comment by Lazeil on the EU WoW forums concerning Lay on Hands, saying he doesn’t consider LoH a cooldown, because:

[I]t can’t be used beforehand when you know something is going to happen and it suffers from gcd so it can’t be used quickly if something unexpected happened. It even has a drawback. There are very few situations where I would use LoH instead of Divine Protection.

And, furthermore, “[t]here are very few situations where I would use LoH instead of Divine Protection. I use LoH mostly to save others for example from Infest on Lich King Heroic.”

Nevertheless, the downside of such a spec seems to be mostly in regards to threat. Only 1/5 Divine Strength, no Crusade, no Touched by the Light. Lazeil must live and die by Misdirects and ToTs.

Would I recommend this for normal raiding? Absolutely not. It seems entirely situational, good only for heroic 25mans, and only for specific fights therein. Just keeping threat alone probably requires a lot of external help.

Still, nonetheless, it’s interesting to see how those at the cutting edge are speccing their character, even if it’s for certain fights or situations.