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That was a short 3 months. I apologize for being out for the holidays to all three of my readers. So a few things happened.

Patch 3.2.2 was released and with it a revamped Onyxia encounter. When I say revamped I really mean “We changed her level and added more whelps. Many Whelps. The amount of whelps is now absurd. Seriously, look at all these whelps. And their new elite big brothers that try to kill you while Onyxia flies around.” Other than that, not much has changed. I’ve been main and off tank a couple times. A few times when she landed the Main tank was still killing the spawned elite so I picked her up and tanked her for a little while. All the 10 man pugs I’ve played in downed her first try or second. The loot is now mediocre, and the whole thing feels like a half assed attempt to recycle assets and keep players happy. I really think it would’ve better served Blizzard and the players if there was a reason why she came back from the dead. Say, maybe the Earthwarder now known as Deathwing had somehow harnessed non-necrotic resurrection power and was using it to revitalize his brood. Some dark energy from some long forgotten god maybe? I doubt their Old Gods are spent after only two expansions.

3.3 was a real game changer. With the opening of Icecrown Citadel and the revamp of the Looking For Group system, I think most people are ecstatic. More people want to run dungeons than pvp so opening it up cross realm has made it incredibly easy to hop in a group, down a handful of bosses and get spit back out to whatever you were doing in the regular world. I wasn’t really on board at first. Grouping with people from LFG was a crap shoot anyways, and now it’s opened up to people you never met and will likely never meet again. So far the asshattery has been minimal. I haven’t had a group dissolve prior to downing the last boss on the first or second try. I’ve been able to grab pug after pug after pug and rack up the Emblems of Triumph. So much so that I don’t have anything new to spend it on. Even on my other 80. I’m just buying Crusader Orbs and reselling them until I get enough cash to grab one of the TOC recipes that needs them.

This has got me wondering about the On Demand nature of the game now. You seriously can log in and do ANYTHING in a 1 hour block. Questing is now just something you do while waiting in the LFG queue to kill bosses A, B, C, and D, collect emblems, maybe a piece of epic gear, and then do it all over again. Its placed nearly all players on the same level and killed quite a large portion of the Raid Dungeon economy. Raiders used to be able to peddle things like Crusader Orbs to player that just ran around the world collecting and crafting. Now they’re dirt cheap. Even Primordial Saronite can be obtained by a pug player after a week or two of getting 2 Frost Emblems each day.

Another problem is, you now don’t care much about the where and why of a dungeon. Most groups you’ll end up in have been through dozens of times already and power through without much thought. I’ve had more silent runs than any. Rarely a “Hey” at the start of the dungeon. If you’re lucky you get a “gg” before they leave the group and requeue. I can’t imagine the lower level characters getting a sense of world when they are instantly teleported to a level appropriate dungeon. I almost wish they implemented an attunement before letting players flash in from the other side of the world. I hated having to run new people through BRD to get a core fragment so they could zone into MC, but at least then they’d have to know where the dungeon entrance is. For the life of me I can’t tell you how to get in to ICC. My only way in is to press “I” and click a check box.

They’ve remedied this partially with how the quests work for ICC. You pick up the starting quest in Dalaran and the quest chains through each of the dungeons giving you a purpose for killing each boss and getting a mini-in-game-cinematic explaining the events. Halls of Reflection didn’t feel as dire as I think it was meant to feel. Pit of Saron I don’t really get, and… whatever the other one is called… yeah, there’s really not a narrative that’s compelling there. Maybe it’s due to my rolling with what feels like min-maxers just trying to get their next badge so they can get their new piece of gear that makes the dungeon go that much faster. Somewhere a long the line I just lost the point of the Dungeons other than getting loot.

Back in 1.0 one of my favorite dungeons was Shadowfang Keep. It gave a narrative in several storylines that culminated in you entering the keep, discovering Arugal as he murders the deathstalker you came to find and vanishing. It was a great cinematic moment that gave you a purpose and tied up the narrative of the whole zone. You could argue that all the quests in Icecrown lead up to the final conflict with the Lich King, but it just doesn’t seem like that’s what driving you to complete quests in the zone. The series that has you encroaching on the Citadel never really gets moment the same way Silverpine did. All the threads in the zone don’t push you towards that final conflict. Most of the time you just fuck off to kill some Vrykul, but there’s not a Vrykul dungeon in the 5 man tier of Icecrown.

It’s almost like they weren’t sure you were going to face the Lich King in the end. How thefuck did that happen?

I found this to be an interesting read (I found it via the great Zen of Design). A life time ago I found myself working in in game support for an MMO that had a fairly stringent harassment policy. Inevitably there was, at least once a week, some claiming that by removing them from the game I was violating their right to free speech and that they were going to sue us. I’d remove them and include our legal contact information in the email that explained to them that they violated the EULA.

Social interaction is something I’ve always found enthralling in online game. At one point when Gabe at Penny Arcade was getting stomped in Warcraft 3, he said “good game.” The obvious response he got from the other player was “I want to shit on your mothers chest.” This is the norm for most online game interactions. I think the Greater internet fuckwad theory covers it.

I’m all for free speech. If some asshole tells me not to cuss I typically tell them to fuck off. I’m all for protecting speech, even speech I disagree with. The thing is, MMOs are like private clubs complete with membership fees and secret handshakes. If you mouth off in a private club, management tosses your dumb ass out on the street and revokes your membership with no refund. While you can’t get back in to said private club since they know your face, MMOs are just another purchase to get back in.

Anyone with too much disposable income can make a game of getting punted from an MMO. Hell, even if you don’t have disposable income, most have trial accounts readily available as long as you have an email account which can be infinitely iterated.

“But my country club lets me cuss!” Those are the rules of the country club. I’m sure that certain behaviors are not allowed in said country club and it’s usually determined by the people that are members. My MMO’s have a target demographic of teen and up, and our friends at the ESRB have determine that naughty words aren’t ok for kids under 17. Allowing profanity in a game means you’re limiting the number of people that are “allowed” to play it. Most games will scrap content to get a lighter rating from the ESRB. In the case of MMOs, they have to enforce a specific behavior.

I still find it hilarious that someone actually took the free speech argument to court. I’m curious what kind of idiot lawyer thought they could win the case.

This past weekend I made a terrible mistake. You see, a few months back my girlfriend’s account was compromised due to a keylogger and to further protect both of our account I got a Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app for my iphone. Now my account has that extra layer of protection from unauthorized access. Apparently this is protects from authorized access as well.

So the terrible mistake was upgrading my iphone. I backed up my apps, data, etc. I actually have 3 or 4 backups of my iphone so I thought I was covered. After restoring my apps I sat down to do the brewfest token grind and found out that I couldn’t log in.

Now, I double and triple checked my backups and the application itself. Everything seemed in order. Maybe it was an issue with auth in general. Nope, no forum posts. So I filled out the web support form and waited until monday to phone into support.

The phone lines opened at 8am and I got a busy signal from 8am to 8:25am. From 8:25am to 9:05am I sat on hold listening to the goddamned Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft sound tracks. It was a 40 minute kick in the balls reminding me “Hey, don’t you wish you were playing our games instead of sitting in the phone queue?”

So, after over an hour of sitting on the phone waiting I spent two minutes talking to the rep who sent me an email with links and instructions in it. What the hell? Granted, he was incredibly pleasant and apologetic for the whole two minutes, but why the hell did I spend an hour waiting to get a goddamned email? The website listed my issue specifically and instead of just linking to a faq that says “Fill out and fax/email these goddamned forms” it says “call our terribly overburdened phone support team and waste their goddamned so they can send you an email with directions that should just be on this site.”

The account recovery process Blizzard has set up is so convoluted, it would be easier for someone to get all my bank information that to gain access to my Blizzard account. Recovering my student loan credentials is more streamlined and for the record, Sallie Mae is fucking bankrupt while Blizzard grosses over a billion dollars a year.

Overall I’m just pissed that I didn’t do anything wrong, and now don’t have access to my account for several days, plus the added headache of trying to jump through hoops to regain access. Granted, good security requires hoops to be jumped through to protect your account, but this is just plain stupid. There was no reason for me to have to call. I didn’t provide any information that wasn’t required by the forms I was emailed. Blizzard makes fantastic games, but really, they need to get some intelligent people in support and empower them to streamline this shit.

To add insult to injury, after I already got the email and confirmed that I could access my account, I got an email reply to my initial submission from the web form that I sent on Sunday telling me to email someone else or call in. Their web form sent my info to the wrong department. Had I not called in I’d still be hosed right now, which is incredibly disappointing. I guess Blizzard didn’t get their 10 million + subscribers based on customer support. For a company that makes complex programs dedicated to player interaction I found the support system worked about as well as the game servers on patch day. I give it one out of five stars.

Protection

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Retribution

• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.
• Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Items

• The Black Heart: This item’s animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection.
• Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
• Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
• Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

There were only a few changes that differed from the previous notes I posted. Righteous Fury is still getting nerfed, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be a nerf over all. The 10% threat loss being made up by the bonus strength from the new Blessing of Sanctuary.

Ardent Defender got a much needed nerf. It was insanely powerful last patch and the 1/3rd reduction isn’t too bad. It certainly reduces the effective health gain, but I don’t think anyone is going to think twice about it being part of their build. It’s just too good of a get out of jail free card that I’ve had proc on many an occasion.

Touched by the Light and Blessing of Sanctuary I think make this patch a wash in buff/vs nerf. Blessing of Sanctuary now gives 10% strength as well as stamina. That 10% strength is going to increase our damage output and threat. Holy damage and subsequent threat is slightly reduced by the new Touched by the Light, due to most protection armor sets having more than twice as much stamina as strength. Still, while that equals a slight reduction in spellpower, the extra damage/threat from the bonus strength from Blessing of Sanctuary about evens it out. I’m sure we’ll start seeing more Strength gems in red sockets instead of Stamina gems if threat becomes an issue.

I tanked a few instances post patch and it does seem like my DPS is greater than before the patch. No one has been able to peel a boss or a trash mob off of me (except another Paladin that forgot to turn of Righteous Fury while ret spec).

Overall I don’t feel like much has changed. This has to be one of the lighter tweaks Blizzard has done to the class, though to be honest, lately all of the tweaks have seemed slight. There haven’t been sweeping changes like in the early days where entire talent trees were scrapped and people had to relearn how to play their class. If you think I’m completely wrong… well there’s a comment section here for that reason.

The Kalu’ak Tuskarr present some interesting moral and ethical questions to players that I fear is wasted on the majority of players. the repeatable quest Planning for the Future begs the question of players “Will you kidnap children every day for several weeks so you can get a sweet fishing pole and a Penguin pet?”  What the hell does Trapper Mau’i plan on doing with all those kids anyways? Do you really think his intentions are honorable or do you think that baby Wolvar are a delicacy to the Tuskarr race?

Sometimes I just think it’s best to let nature run it’s course and these Walrus bastards should be murdered at the hands of the parents who have lost their children. Why can’t I ally myself with the Wolvar and get some good, old fashioned retribution?

I’ve added a combat formula page here. In the first expansion Blizzard realized they screwed the pooch by way of itemization in creating items that used a percentage. Blackhand’s Breadth comes to mind. In 1.0 it had a flat 2% crit bonus which meant it was the most powerful trinket in the game for a damage dealer. The same went for Edgemaster’s Handguards which were favored by tanks since it gave a flat 2% hit bonus even though it was a level 44 mail item. 2.0 introduced combat ratings with increased the complexity of combat formulas. If you take a look at my tables which are an aggregate of information from Wowwwiki, Wowhead, and Elitist Jerks, the complexity shows. Each of those sites go into more details to how these combat formulas work, but for the sake of simplicity I’ve condensed the base information into these combat tables. I’ve put them in order of priority and will expand on my reasoning now.

The stats are listed in order of importance (in my opinion):

[table id=1 /]

The basic stats are fairly straight forward for any tank. You want Stamina because that increases your health pool and increases the number of hits you can take before dying. Stamina will never go out of style and never diminishes in value. The more the better. All tanking items stack stamina pretty heavily so typically you won’t have to worry about whether one item is better than another because of stamina. Currently Stamina increases damage dealt by Protection Paladins thanks to Touched by the Light. You should never skip Touched by the Light in your talent spec.

Second is strength. Also fairly straight forward. The greater your strength, the greater your damage. It also increases your block value which increases the amount of damage mitigated when a hit is blocked. In 3.2.2 Touched by the Light will be modified by Strength (20/40/60%) instead of Stamina (10/20/30%). Since Strength is typically more than half your Stamina this will increase damage dealt but threat will be kept in line with the reduction in Righteous Fury from 90% to 80%. Threat might actually be buffed a little bit over all, though I haven’t crunched numbers to see. The majority of Tanking gear is Stam/Str.

The rest of the base stats are fairly meaningless to a tank. Agility offers avoidance but you’re much better off stacking Dodge and Parry instead of Agility. Intellect increases your mana pool, but between Blessing of Sanctuary and Divine Plea you should be able to sustain your mana pool.

I’ve separated the combat rating from the base stats because they were added in 2.0 while the base was in 1.0. The ratings increased complexity, and some are going away in Cataclysm. Though, honestly, I think they’re keeping tanking stats complex instead of simplifying them.

[table id=2 /]

Defense is your top stat. Firstly, it reduces and eventually eliminates your chance to be crit by an enemy. At the very least Defense needs to be 540 (535 for Heroic and lower) to achieve crit immunity through Defense alone. Defense is spread pretty evenly across gear at level 60 so achieving the cap is easy. Once you hit the cap you can still stack Defense as it increases all types of avoidance, but many prefer to stack parry and dodge explicitly. Avoidance is favored over block since block just mitigates damage and avoidance, well, avoids the damage completely.

Beyond damage reduction and avoidance is Expertise. Expertise is not the same as hit rating. Hit rating reduces your chance to miss while Expertise reduces the chance for a hit to be parried or dodged. Like reducing the chance for a mob to crit you via defense, Expertise can help you avoid extra damage. Some mobs and bosses can get parry hasted. When an attack is parried, both players and enemies and given a haste to their next attack. With enough expertise you can eliminate dodges and parries. It’s estimated that you will need 26 expertise (214 expertise rating) to eliminate dodges on a boss, and 56 expertise (460 rating) to eliminate parries. Finding that much rating while maintaining Defense cap and stacking Stamina is incredibly difficult. I haven’t seen anyone achieve these caps without sacrificing those other stats which, over all, reduces survivability. It becomes a problem of balancing stats and sockets if you try to hit the expertise cap.

The only other stat worth noting is resilience, which can be used to patch the crit cap if you don’t have enough defense. Resilience is on most if not all PVP gear and can be gotten fairly cheap.

When Cataclysm hits certain stats will be removed for the sake of simplification. While DPS classes will no longer have to worry about attack power or spell power to determine their DPS, tanking classes will be keeping all of those combat rating and defense will be removed, even though defense is the simplest stat as far as dodge, parry, block, etc. Block rating will be removed, likely replaced with a flat block damage mitigation. More than likely it’ll be modified by talents in the Protection tree. It still feel like tanking stats are remaining complicated while other roles are being simplified. Cataclysm is still a ways out and hopefully the stats will be further simplified, but I can’t think of a way of simplifying it without removing a players ability to stack for avoidance or mitigation. Time will tell.

“Do you have your tanking gear on?”

This is what I get asked way too much when joining a Heroic group. While on only one or two occassions I had PvP or fishing gear on when joining the group, more often than not, I do have my tanking gear on. I don’t think I’m a slouch when it comes to gearing my character though I definitely have a few slots lagging. (Tundra Pauldrons, Silver-Plated Battlechest and Kurzel’s Warband jump out to me, what about you?) However I started tanking Heroics before I had half this gear with mainly quested items and some reputation rewards with a few normal drops here and there. I’ve had no issues tanking any instance.

I don’t think 26k is low at all for any five man content. I had around 20k when I started Heroics (props to the healers that kept me up) and have slowly built up to a much more respected 26k. With group buffs I push more towards 30k or more depending on group composition. Though something to keep in mind is that I’m a prot paladin and if I ever drop below 35% I get 30% of the incoming damage mitigated thanks to Ardent Defender. That would put my effective health (theoretical) up at 29kish unbuffed. Maybe it’s the healer asking (though typically it’s DPS) and they’re used to a higher HP tank.

Still, short of opening my armory page after inviting me to the group to check all my stats, I’m confused at how someone can make a decision on how well a tank is going to do. Even opening someones armory and checking their gear isn’t going to tell you if they know how to play or not. For the most part Heroics are not completely gear dependent.

“Sorry, we’re going to drop you. You’re not Def capped.”

One of the biggest problems I’ve been facing is that people think they know the ins and outs of my class when they know only one or two things. For those who haven’t played World of Spreadsheet-craft, quite a few people much smarter than you or I crunched number, combed the forums, tested, retested, and documented the undocumented combat formulas. To an extent Blizzard has commented on how things work to avoid “Hey, your game is broken.” petitions submitted to the GMs, but there is a lot they keep in the dark. One such nugget is that Mobs and bosses have a default crit chance on a baseline character. That is to say, a character with no Defense bonus or Resilience. Same level enemies have a 5% chance to crit you built in. For each level over you they get a bonus to crit of 0.2%. This goes for Player vs Player and Mob vs Player.  This makes a level fuck Raid Boss (level 83) have a crit rate of 5.6%. This means you need a Defense Skill (not rating) of 540 in order to avoid all critical strikes against you. The problem with this knowledge is that ever person who wishes they were in a progression raiding guild will pretend they know how to tell you how to play. They don’t know that Heroic bosses are level 82 for combat formula purposes. Their crit rate is only going to be 5.4%. Meaning you only need 535 Defense skill in order to avoid critical strikes.

“Hey asshole, you linked your armory, you’re only at 514 Defense, you shouldn’t be tanking heroics!”

That’s what you and many of the people I’ve grouped with on Kilrogg think. If you can’t hit that defense cap with Defense alone, you can patch the hole with resilience. You see, people typically only see the Defense stat one dimensionally. If you don’t have 540 you shouldn’t be tanking. Defense does several things:

1. reduces your chance to be critically struck
2. Increases your Dodge, Block, and Parry
3. reduce the chance that a Mob will hit you at all

You can further reduce the chance of critical strikes with Resilience. Resilience is popular on PvP items because it has other positive effects that are most useful in PvP. So, at the moment my Anvil of Titans(it’s a great threat trinket) and a PvP enchant on my Tempered Titansteel Helm(I had some extra points and 30 stam never hurts) effectively patch what’s left of that 5.4% crit rate Heroic Bosses have on me. I’m crit immune for all intensive purposes. Hell, I even hit the Raid Boss crit cap, so I’m uncritable in nearly all scenarios.

Notice, it took several paragraphs to spell it out and the average PUG member that’s judging you by your HP alone usually doesn’t have the attention span to hear all this. Plus we glossed over quite a few more complex points that can change these calculations. They just know that 540 Defense means uncrittable and you’re not there. These are not groups worth being in, unless you want to have a repair bill and/or out DPS people with your massive prot damage. Sure, it feels good to kill someone on the DPS meters, especially if they’re a rogue or hunter, but really it just makes the instance take longer and you run the risk of your healer running out of mana before your group puts out enough damage for the boss to fall over and give you upgrades to your sad sack of blue gear.

Blizzcon is already in full swing, and while I’m sad I missed this year, it appears that nothing NEW is being announced. It seems that many people forgot they signed NDAs as all the information about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm was leaked at least a week before Blizzcon. Which saddens me. I was really looking forward to seeing people be incredibly wrong, like when WoWGuru announced mounted combat in Burning Crusade. Ah the good old days when people stuck to their NDAs.

Cataclysm is just that. Neltharion, or Deathwing as he is now known, resurfaces back in Azeroth and his return causes the world to change dramatically. Classic zones are sundered, flooded, or on fire. I’m hoping Lore Masters at Blizzard are all nodding to themselves that it was a good idea not to put Deathwing in as a Boss in 1.0 with Bob the Dragonkin guarding his lair, and instead made it “Blackwing’s Lair” and have Razorgore guard it instead. High fives all around for not killing off an important lore figure until 4.0… Instead you killed off Kael’thas (a couple times), Illidan, Kil’Jaeden, Lady Vashj, Teron Gorefiend, Kel’thuzad, and now Arthas/Ner’zhul/Lich King. I think any Lore nerd is hard pressed to come up with anything to kill in 5.0.

The Alliance finally gets a beast race with the Worgen and the Horde gets the “uh we couldn’t really think of anything new” Goblins. Strange how Goblins are now allied with the race that enslaved them (Trolls). Just like how the Blood Elves got allied with their arch enemies that they warred with for thousands of years (Trolls again). At least it’s not as bad as inter-dimensional space paladins that worship Christmas tree ornaments. Like any other Lore nerd I can cry foul and secretly wish I got the cooler of the two new races. Or in wishing Lore was consistent or that they had a reason for being inconsistent other than “I thought it would be cool man.”

Goblins get Azshara for 5 – 15. Thank god Azuregos isn’t a kill you on sight dragon. I still think a few new goblins will ask for all his money and get one shotted. I’m sure Azuregos will like being able to kill people again. Worgen get Gilneas, which looks like Silverpine.

Protip to any MMO developer that wants to have strong flexible lore: Have character communicate the lore to the player instead of an omnipotent narrator. Characters can have flawed views of the past that can be revised, omnipotent narrators cannot. Saying a character had the wrong view of history is way better than saying “I thought it would be cool man.”

Level cap to 85. That’s… weird, but ok. I guess. The talent trees will not get taller, but there will be new talents. I’m thinking those 5 extra points could go in my ret tree and offer up a little more DPS/Threat for my prot build.

Classic Zones Remade: This is something I’m very curious about. Will this be phased or is the old content effectively being removed if it doesn’t meld with the new cataclysmic landscape? Am I going to see a lot of people heading back to the old world before the xpac hits so they can get their Lore Master achievements before they are phased away? Does having played 1.0 entitle me to the right to say “I remember Mankrik and lovely wife, who was butchered and left for dead. Poor Mankrik couldn’t let it go and asked every damn person to go and find her rotting corpse so they could confirm to him, like the thousands of other adventurers that passed through the crossroads, that his wife was in fact still rotting away a few minutes south of town. Maybe he’ll seek revenge and go on a killing spree worthy of Saurfang.

Finally seeing the release of content that’s been on the map is a pleasant thought. Uldum, Grim Batol, Hyjal, Gilneas, and many others I’m sure. There’s a new Wintergrasp called Tol Barad and I’m sure a new Battleground as well. The added bonus of being able to fly on the mainland is great. There’s almost no use for land mounts now, unless they get buffed or a new land mount is introduced.

The Archaeology secondary profession has thrown me for a loop. The way I understand it, with Archaeology you can now set your character on the Path of the Titans, which offers an alternate character progression in addition to leveling, gear, and talents. It almost sounds like a re-imagining of the runemaster class that was in development for Wrath, but was scrapped for whatever reason. There’s not a whole lot to say about the profession except it seems to be the only thing the media didn’t talk about before the announcement.

As much as I like to complain, there’s a lot to look forward to in the new expansion. I’d rather be a werewolf than a goblin, but I’d rather be a Blood Elf than either of those so it doesn’t really matter to me. Well… I guess being a werewolf would be way cooler than being a Blood Elf. Too bad they can’t be Paladins.

Paladins

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Talents
  • Protection
    • Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
    • Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.
  • Retribution
    • Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

If this holds until the patch is finally released it doesn’t feel too bad.

From the top-

Righteous Fury: nerf. No matter how minuscule it’s still a nerf, which might bring our threat generation more in line with other tanks and start making under geared Protection Paladins realize they need better gear (ME!). 10% seems like a lot, but it’s really only about a 5% threat reduction since Righteous Fury boosts threat to 190% currently (well 5.26…%). I’m not worried about it, as I stated previously we’ve had it pretty easy as far as threat generation goes.

Judgements of the Just: yeah… don’t really care in tanking scenarios as most bosses are immune to stuns. It helped a little on spell casting trash, but I guess I’ll have to use Arcane Torrent a little more.

Touched by the Light: Now this change is intriguing. As tanks, we usually gemmed up stamina. Increasing our heath increases our survivability and as a bonus, from this talent, helped us with threat generation. From an item budget stand point the change from 10/20/30% to 20/40/60% doesn’t matter. 1 strength costs the same as 2 stamina. I see a lot of my pure stam sockets being changed to stam/str hybrid gems. With the previous block value change it seems that it’ll be really easy to hit the block value cap when going for threat. Strength does contribute to block value. Without really pushing for strength, my current strength is a little less than half my stamina, but a change in gem sockets will probably bring them back in line.

I see this change effecting end game players more than heroic players. Towards the end game more people are going for avoidance than Block Value. Block Value is still effective in Heroics but when you have bosses hitting for huge amounts of damage it’s better to simple not get hit instead of mitigating the damage. I have yet to set foot in a 10 man much less a 25 man so I can’t speak volumes about the end game.

Seal of Command: So Seal of Righteousness is now even more irrelevant. Seal of Command was already the choice seal for Retribution Paladins, but really, come on. Seal of Righteousness has been collecting dust in the spellbooks of many a paladin. I’ve read that some people think this would be a better tanking seal now that it chains to other targets. I still think Seal of Vengeance is a getter deal. If you have the Hammer of the Righteous Glyph you’re stacking Seal of Vengeance across 4 targets securing threat without really trying.

More than Paladin changes, Onyxia is being revamped for level 80 10 and 25 man raids. Does this mean the level 60 version will cease to exist? or will it be some sort of selectable option? Personally, I’ve been running low level guild members through Onyxia and killing her for my own self satisfaction. I died many a time to that dragon in 1.0 it’s nice to exact vengeance now that I’m way overpowered for the encounter. Is this recycling of content a sign of things to come? Will Hogger get buffed to level 80 and get his own instance? Will the Sons of Arugal get buffed as well?

Something else that was added in patch 3.2 was the Horde Version of the Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber, the Whistle of the Venomhide Ravasaur. Now, as a member of the Horde since launch, I’m not exagerating when a say I’ve been waiting for almost five years for this to finally come out. However there are some key differences with the Frostsaber line.

The Frostsaber was a brutal reputation grind that could only be increased by three quests, and you used to have to complete a total of 560 quests in order to reach exalted with Wintersaber Trainers in order to be able to purchase the mount. The reputation gains for each quest turn in have been significantly buffed, but it still takes close to 200 quest turn ins to gain enough reputation. In 1.0 and at level 60, this was grueling.

3.2 introduced a set of quests to obtain a Venomhide Hatchling after completing two quests which aren’t nearly as bad as the Frostsaber quests. The first one called Toxic Tolerance was probably the most annoying, but really doesn’t hold a candle to having to kill monsters for a less than desirable drop rate. It took about an hour on day one to complete the first quest as lots of people were wanting to start the chain. After that is Venomhide Eggs which was very easy even with the large number of people trying to complete it.

Once you complete the second quest you get the Venomhide Hatchling and the quest They Grow Up So Fast. Once you have your hatching you can summon it in one of three zones and ask it for a daily quest. The quests are incredibly easy and require just a little traveling to get done. The drop rates on all the quests are nearly 100%, although I think one (Searing Roc Feathers) of them is more like 33%. Each day you get a baby tooth. After 20 teeth you can turn in the teeth along with some raw materials and BAM! Epic mount that doesn’t require epic riding.

So on day 11 I summoned the Hatchling expecting to see the giant headed baby guy that looks just like the Obsidian Hatchling and instead I see that all the feeding has resulting in a much larger raptor.

I’m curious if this guy is going to get any bigger, but judging by the fact that the first change I saw was after the halfway point, I’m thinking not. EDIT: After reviewing screens on Wowhead.com it appears that I’m wrong. After ever 5th tooth it appears that this guy has grown. The 6th day I failed to notice because it wasn’t as big of a jump as it was on the 11th day. We’ll see what happens after the 16th day.

With all the excitement about Phased content in Wrath of the Lich King this got me thinking about how something as small as caring for a baby raptor can make players feel like their hard work is actually impacting the world as a whole. The Wrathgate is often sited as one of the greatest questlines in the current game for how it lets the player impact the world they play in. Though I have to be honest, after everyone hyping the hell out of the Wrathgate sequence, I was slightly disappointed. I was hoping for something as world changing as the opening of the Ahn’Qiraj Scarab Wall. Instead it was just a slight cosmetic change to a part of the landscape no one has any reason to return to.

I have to admit that the instanced content in the Undercity and Orgrimmar was incredible and personal. You and whoever else is doing the quest at the time getting to fight into the Undercity (albeit with nigh invulnerability thanks to Thrall’s buff) was very epic feeling.

Anyways, I’m actually hoping for more personal quests like this. They don’t have to have grandiose flourishes like the Wrathgate to feel important to players.