World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

[Gil Hamilton]

Wintergrasp is awesome and so is Strand of the Ancients. The big problem I have with Wintergrasp is the CRUSHING amount of lag that comes with it. Anywhere near the keep when 200 asshat Alliance guys show up means I'm locked up and get to see snippets of Night Elf Death Knights and Rogues teabagging me before I end up at the spirit healer.

I really like Strand of the Ancients and have been having a really good time in it. As a Boomkin Druid, I'm a big fan of catching a ride on a Demolisher and laying waste, since it provides a temporarily safe platform to get my spells off rather than having a distinctive enough graphic that every melee DPS in sight peels off the nearly dead player they were attacking to attack me like my mere presence taunted them. My favorite bit is catching guys running up with Seaform charges, letting them set it, cycloning them, disarming the bomb, and doing a little dance as they watch. Usually, since I'm in mostly raiding Naxx gear, I will get stopped if they've got PvP gear, but it's still fun stuff. My only problem is in PUG SotA getting Demo drivers who stop at max catapult range to bomb players rather than driving through them and straight to gates.

Both Wintergrasp and SotA could come with a written exam on how to use Siege weapons. If anyone answers that you should stop attacking fortifications with a Demolisher or Siege Engine, then you aren't allowed to PvP in anything but Vanilla WoW.

[Minischoles]

As a Boomkin Druid, I'm a big fan of catching a ride on a Demolisher and laying waste, since it provides a temporarily safe platform to get my spells off rather than having a distinctive enough graphic that every melee DPS in sight peels off the nearly dead player they were attacking to attack me like my mere presence taunted them.

Amen, i used to joke that as a boomkin I had the only taunt that worked in player vs player, since even seeing a boomkin will attract nearly every player in sight to come and do bad things to you. I've had players chase me around the AB map for nearly 5 minutes just because they saw I was a boomkin.

That being said, as a healer I really don't like pvp right now, even with being able to get a decent set of gear quite quickly due to badges i'm still insanely gibbable, and burst is so insane right now, along with the massive server lag on even moderately populated battlegroups in WG being unbearable, I can't get a heal off before someone's died.

Personally, if i'm in a BG i prefer playing feral in full tank gear right now. Full Naxx25 gear, and i'm basically an unstoppable killing machine, even in Bear Form, very high armor and hp to go with it, and if i get tenacity there is absolutely nothing like being a bear with tenacity.

[Gil Hamilton]

Right now WoW PvP was at the same place it was at the start of TBC. Defensive gear hasn't yet caught up with level 80 damage, so there is alot of glass cannons and really squishy players out there. It doesn't help that right now Rogues and Death Knights are very much the Flavor of the Month, so there is alot of pain doing down in melee range. It's kind of funny, since I've personally witnessed a level 80 shaman in Naxx gear die just about instantly to a rogue getting the drop on him... then the rogue hit vanish and would have done the same thing to me except that I threw a typhoon at the body of my shaman friend and managed to knock the rogue out of stealth. At that point, I threw down treants, hit starfall, cast abolish poison, and prayed. It only ended because the rogue had shit for HP and one of the first stars that hit him stunned him and my Starfire crit.

Of course, if you are a Naxx25 geared feral, in bear form you should have seventy five gijillion HP and respectable damage, plus a few tricks, so I imagine you are less afraid of rogues than me with half my gear being cloth.

Of course, the converse of all this is because DKs and Rogues and such at the flavor of the month, it has attracted ALOT of scrubs to those classes hoping to faceroll their way to free welfare epics. While even a scrub rogue can be dangerous, a bad DK is actually pretty tame. Still, it makes me miss when Warlocks were the PvP flavor of the month. I got very good at killing Shitty Warlocks.

[Minischoles]

Of course, if you are a Naxx25 geared feral, in bear form you should have seventy five gijillion HP and respectable damage, plus a few tricks, so I imagine you are less afraid of rogues than me with half my gear being cloth.

Just slightly less afraid, it was mildly amusing to watch a scrub geared rogue open up one me, vanish and try again, shadowdance and try some more, before I turned around and started mangling him to death, all with barely losing half my hp. It is very very fun to be a bear druid in pvp, especially when Naxx has been kind and dropped tons of feral gear, despite there being no set feral tank for our guild currently.

[Ender]

Not to be a stick-in-the-mud, but congratulations! You've just mastered Enhancement PvP! Attack and pray for a WF proc. It's such a strong ability that Blizzard have given up on even attempting to balance Enhancement PvP. And the sad part is; outside of one shotting a Warlock, you'll only really be able to steam roll Priests. Every other class has a million and one ways to keep you either locked down with CC, or snared and way out of reach.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my Shaman I really do, and when WF procs and crits, PLATE buckles under my onslaught, but when it doesn't ...

Ah. I think this explains why I didn't understand your earlier statements about my DPS, until the other day (when I jumped to dual wield) I was sporting Rockbiter on my two handed axe. Combine that with a windfury totem, strength of earth totem, flurry, and thundering strikes, I was doing north of 100 DPS of white damage in the mid 30s, compared to the rather sad damage I was getting spamming Fire Shock.

Of course, now I hit 40 and am dual wielding with Stormstrike (which basically procs windfury every single time) and wearing mail. I farmed RFD and SM(A) to get double Cleavers and most of the SM mail set. I can basically jump a guy and hit him for two procs, stormstrike, and a bonused earth shock before my cooldown and slow hit speed catch up with me, stalling me out. By that time I've made 60-75% of the mobs health disappear. I know I want weapons with speed of about 2.6 due to the bug, bu the DPS for the cleavers is good enough to make up for it for now. I need to sit down and comb through Wowiki and find some good gear to hunt for in the next levels.

That and decide if I'm taking this guy to 80 or swapping to DK at 55. I'm having fun with this guy, but the immeasurable levels of ownage available from a DK thrill me.


Also, when did they remove the ability to kite raid type bosses? I was going to try to kite that Dragon in Duskwood up to the lowbie place near Stormwind when my buddy said you can't do that anymore. Why did they take that out? It was great fun, and could have made an outstanding achievement.

[Ghost Rider]

Also, when did they remove the ability to kite raid type bosses? I was going to try to kite that Dragon in Duskwood up to the lowbie place near Stormwind when my buddy said you can't do that anymore. Why did they take that out? It was great fun, and could have made an outstanding achievement.

Two reasons, but one is completely nulled at this time and the other is because people are whiny. The nulled reason is that Kazzak used to have an ability to unleash death bolts and he would regain health making any raid unable to kill him if he has a fresh batch of newbies and level 1-60 who have no idea. But no longer there so that's not a problem. And to be honest, none of the other world bosses had anywhere near that ability for a raid. They just applied the inability to kite any of the world bosses because of Kazzak and what he did to one server.

[Gil Hamilton]

Two reasons, but one is completely nulled at this time and the other is because people are whiny. The nulled reason is that Kazzak used to have an ability to unleash death bolts and he would regain health making any raid unable to kill him if he has a fresh batch of newbies and level 1-60 who have no idea. But no longer there so that's not a problem. And to be honest, none of the other world bosses had anywhere near that ability for a raid. They just applied the inability to kite any of the world bosses because of Kazzak and what he did to one server.

Ah... the legendary Kazzak kite. Shame they leashed him. Of course, there was a lot of good Kazzak videos. I think my favorite was the one when Reckoning for Paladins could stack an infinite amount, so a paladin enlisted some help building up an enormous amount of them. Then he ran up to Kazzak and instagibbed the poor demon.

It's a shame, because one upon a time, it actually took a bit of skill to kite those things to major cities. On my server, I remember when one of our big alliance guilds managed to kite one of the Emerald Nightmare dragons INTO Orgrimmar and left him on top of the Bank.

[Rahvin]

Had my first experiences tanking as a Death Knight over the weekend. Lvl 72-74, we did a few runs of UK, Nexus, and AN. My previous experience tanking was as a Paladin, so the difference in tactics is...significant to say the least. Where AoE used to be a joke, I now have to focus on a specific rotation to generate adequate threat.

I'm currently Frost specced (which is doing surprising amounts of damage while leveling, btw), and the multiple "Oh, Shit!" abilities gained by Frost are extremely useful. My Icebound Fortitude now lasts for 18 seconds on a 1-minute cooldown, and I can use Lichborne or Unbreakable Armor as well.

In 5-man regulars instances, it seems that all pulls are AoE pulls. I needed to begin every pull with Death and Decay, folowed by Icy Touch, Plague Strike, and Pestilence. When the runes came back up, I followed up with Howling Blast and Blood Boil to maintain AoE aggro, throwing Rune Strikes and Frost Strikes to dump Runic Power while everything was on cooldown. According to my girlfriend/healer, I required very little healing even when tanking multiple mobs at once. On boss fights, maintaining aggro on a single target was a joke. Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Blood Strike > Blood Strike > Obliterate > RP dump > Icy Touch > Plague Strike > Obliterate > Obliterate > RP dump > rinse and repeat.

My biggest difficulties were group coordination (I was too used to destroying Heroics in BC with overgeared groups who had run the instances hundreds of times each) and fights where adds would appear mid-fight. The first (and somewhat the second) was solved with a simple raid-icon macro to ensure single-target focus. The second remains a difficulty, though I swapped some of my avoidance gear for DPS pieces, and this seems to have also helped. When my DnD is on cooldown and I'm focused on keeping the hurt on a mob or three, and two more suddenly appear, they head straight for the healer - and an unfortunate number of mobs seem to be immune to taunt. DnD is always on cooldown, or I don't have the runes to cast it, meaning I need to try to rely on Pestilence > Blood Boil (which doesn't do a lot of damage in a single application and so doesn't tent to generate adequate threat to pull the mobs off the healer), and try to work in some Howling Blasts (on a cooldown and with only a 10-yard AoE, meaning if the healer is at any sort of range I need to readjust positioning or the HB isn't going to help).

As a Paladin I'd usually just throw Avenger's Shield at whatever was attacking the healer, and would easily peel them off. Consecrate and Holy Shield kept everything on me (and the new abilities make that even easier). It was difficult to reestablish aggro when an overzealous Warlock pulled something off of me, but Paladin threat generation was sufficient (and my guildmates were generally intelligent enough with threat) that such things were rare. Paladins also had the advantage of shields, which DKs of course lack. Avoidance is much better than mitigation, but Paladins get three stats raised by Defense, while DKs only get two, and avoidance + mitigation is significantly better than slightly more avoidance and no mitigation beyond armor. I'm compensating with the various tanking cooldowns in the Frost tree, which seems to more than level the playing field...as long as the ability is available.

On the whole, I'm enjoying the challenge of learning a completely different tanking class - and leveling with a Frost DK and my girlfriend's Resto Shaman means we haven't found a group quest we couldn't duo with ease yet. Last night we finished Borean Tundra, and I'm eager to get started on Dragonblight tonight.

[Minischoles]

Also, when did they remove the ability to kite raid type bosses? I was going to try to kite that Dragon in Duskwood up to the lowbie place near Stormwind when my buddy said you can't do that anymore. Why did they take that out? It was great fun, and could have made an outstanding achievement.

Two reasons, but one is completely nulled at this time and the other is because people are whiny. The nulled reason is that Kazzak used to have an ability to unleash death bolts and he would regain health making any raid unable to kill him if he has a fresh batch of newbies and level 1-60 who have no idea. But no longer there so that's not a problem. And to be honest, none of the other world bosses had anywhere near that ability for a raid. They just applied the inability to kite any of the world bosses because of Kazzak and what he did to one server.

There are still a few kiteable ones, but not in the sense they once were, where a bored hunter could decide to go and bring Kazzak to Org or IF. The dragon outside of CoT is kiteable, me and a feral druid did it just before WOTLK, took us about an hour since we had to go through Tanaris, through Thousand needles, into Feralas and up through Desolace into Stonetalon, through the Barrens and Durotar to go through the front entrance. Was quite fun, but he despawned at about 20% hp, and it was nowhere as fun since Org generally had a lot of 70s idling around then.

[Ghost Rider]

Two reasons, but one is completely nulled at this time and the other is because people are whiny. The nulled reason is that Kazzak used to have an ability to unleash death bolts and he would regain health making any raid unable to kill him if he has a fresh batch of newbies and level 1-60 who have no idea. But no longer there so that's not a problem. And to be honest, none of the other world bosses had anywhere near that ability for a raid. They just applied the inability to kite any of the world bosses because of Kazzak and what he did to one server.

Ah... the legendary Kazzak kite. Shame they leashed him. Of course, there was a lot of good Kazzak videos. I think my favorite was the one when Reckoning for Paladins could stack an infinite amount, so a paladin enlisted some help building up an enormous amount of them. Then he ran up to Kazzak and instagibbed the poor demon.

It's a shame, because one upon a time, it actually took a bit of skill to kite those things to major cities. On my server, I remember when one of our big alliance guilds managed to kite one of the Emerald Nightmare dragons INTO Orgrimmar and left him on top of the Bank.

The kite and the reck Pally kill are my faves. The kite one because of the sheer death that happens, and the reck kill because Blizz immediately went "Oh shit!". Though my beef is this with a few other things Blizz just hotfixes because they are being tightwads. Swirly ball for rogues, the variety of unmapped junk and whatnot.

Ah well, halycon days.

[Gil Hamilton]

You'll get to loving DK taking. They are excellent tanks and do a butt-ton of damage while doing it. Whenever a pally or DK is tanking for our group, during a multiple mob pack, I need only to count to three after contact and I can go full out with AoE and not pull a drop of aggro. However, unless you are tanking some hardcore stuff, I understand deep plague is a good way to go for tanking and DPS.

[Rahvin]

You'll get to loving DK taking. They are excellent tanks and do a butt-ton of damage while doing it. Whenever a pally or DK is tanking for our group, during a multiple mob pack, I need only to count to three after contact and I can go full out with AoE and not pull a drop of aggro. However, unless you are tanking some hardcore stuff, I understand deep plague is a good way to go for tanking and DPS.

I did try Unholy (I've played with all three specs), but I've found Frost to be more to my liking. Unholy does have an easier time AoE tanking (their 51-pt talent is a player-centered AoE, they get a third disease and significantly increased disease damage, etc), but their mitigation only becomes better after a significant amount of avoidance is stacked, and their avoidance centerpiece (Bone Shield) is getting nerfed in teh next patch anyway.

I simply don't have enough avoidance for tanking with Unholy - Bone Shield just cannot remain up for a significant amount of time given my currently available gear (BS shines once you've stacked roughly 60%+ avoidance, which combined with the invisible cooldown for losing charges will make glyphed BS last on average 40 seconds. I have roughly 45% avoidance right now, 42% if I specced Unholy). That may change after 80, but there's still an amount of chance involved with Bone Shield - a few unlucky hits and you're left without your primary source of mitigation until the cooldown wears off, and the Unholy rune required can mess up rotations on fights where it needs to be reapplied. Someone described the issue as one of dependability vs. possibility - I might have Bone Shield last for 40 seconds or longer. I know that my Icebound Fortitude will last for 18, etc. Further, Frost has a tasty passive 3% melee avoidance talent that's hard to pass up.

Frost also has the benefit of critting often - my talents give Obliterate, my bread-and-butter single-target attack, a whopping +24% crit chance on top of what's on my character sheet. Other talents give me an additional 45% to critical strike damage with several of my strikes. I can hold single-target (ie, boss) aggro very well, and when I put on my DPS gear and switch to Blood Presence, I start to see Very Big Numbers flying. Other specs have +crit talents for their primary strikes as well, but my spec combines the 9% to Blood/Heart Strike and Obliterate from the Blood tree with the 15% to Obliterate and Howling Blast talent in Frost (and Obliterate is the highest-damage strike other than Rune Strike already, especially glyphed). I also use my Runic Power far more frequently and to better effect than when I was Unholy - Frost Strike is elemental damage so it bypasses armor, and it cannot be dodged, parried, or blocked. It hits significantly harder than Death Coil, which is all Unholy tanks can really use for RP dumping other than Rune Strike, which isn't always available.

So while Unholy would definitely help my AoE threat, I would sacrifice a much more simple rotation, better single-target threat, and more dependable (if technically less effective depending on gear) mitigation/avoidance talents.

Who knows - I'm fickle, and I'll likely go from Frost to Unholy to Blood and back several times over the coming months. After all, respecs don't seem so expensive any more with the money in Northrend.

[Gil Hamilton]

Yeah, Frost can do some good damage, though Blood seems to be the king. I know the DPS exclusive DK we've got floating around is 51/0/20 Blood and he puts out some absolutely sick damage. I'm told all branches can tank, just how they tank and details vary significantly. I don't know much about it, I just like being able to throw down hurricanes the moment a DK tank wades into a pack of mobs. In that way, they are Pally Tank lites.

[Rahvin]

Yeah, Frost can do some good damage, though Blood seems to be the king. I know the DPS exclusive DK we've got floating around is 51/0/20 Blood and he puts out some absolutely sick damage. I'm told all branches can tank, just how they tank and details vary significantly. I don't know much about it, I just like being able to throw down hurricanes the moment a DK tank wades into a pack of mobs. In that way, they are Pally Tank lites.

Blood can't tank so well - the health regen scales for solo play, not raiding, and it doesn't have any real avoidance or mitigation talents deep in teh tree like Frost and Unholy do. Blizzard is attempting to resolve Blood's weak tanking ability with the next patch (primarily through nerfing abilities like Bone Shield and buffing Frost Presence), so we'll see how that works out.

Blood IS basically the single-target DPS king (and is getting a buff for AoE in the next patch - it looks like the anti-Haste debuff currently on Heart Strike that's mostly useless is being changed to make Heart Strike a Cleave-type attack), but the 51-point Dancing Rune Weapon tends to be outperformed by the 21-point Gargoyle talent in Unholy - this is because of the limited duration of DRW and the significantly longer duration (assuming you can keep the Runic Power coming in, something I never had a problem doing) of Gargoyle. Blood's damage (and that of DRW) is also mitigated by enemy armor, while Unholy's Scourge Strike (and buffed diseases, and Gargoyle) and Frost's Frost Strike/Howling Blast are not. There's significant debate over whether 51/0/20 or 50/0/21 is the "better" build for DPS.

I understand exactly what you mean about the frontloaded threat, though. Death and Decay builds so much initial aggro that, assuming the rotation goes relatively smoothly, AoE pulls aren't much of an issue.

Speaking of AoE - my girlfriend's main is a Warlock (0/41/30 build), and the changes to channeled AoE's in 3.0 were more significant than I thought. Her Rain of Fire is insane, easily critting for 3k on multiple enemies at once every few seconds. Almost makes me want to pick up my own Warlock again, but for now gearing my 80 Paladin and getting my Death Knight to 80 are my priorities.

[D.Turtle]

Ah. I think this explains why I didn't understand your earlier statements about my DPS, until the other day (when I jumped to dual wield) I was sporting Rockbiter on my two handed axe. Combine that with a windfury totem, strength of earth totem, flurry, and thundering strikes, I was doing north of 100 DPS of white damage in the mid 30s, compared to the rather sad damage I was getting spamming Fire Shock.

Of course, now I hit 40 and am dual wielding with Stormstrike (which basically procs windfury every single time) and wearing mail. I farmed RFD and SM(A) to get double Cleavers and most of the SM mail set. I can basically jump a guy and hit him for two procs, stormstrike, and a bonused earth shock before my cooldown and slow hit speed catch up with me, stalling me out. By that time I've made 60-75% of the mobs health disappear. I know I want weapons with speed of about 2.6 due to the bug, bu the DPS for the cleavers is good enough to make up for it for now. I need to sit down and comb through Wowiki and find some good gear to hunt for in the next levels.

That and decide if I'm taking this guy to 80 or swapping to DK at 55. I'm having fun with this guy, but the immeasurable levels of ownage available from a DK thrill me.


Also, when did they remove the ability to kite raid type bosses? I was going to try to kite that Dragon in Duskwood up to the lowbie place near Stormwind when my buddy said you can't do that anymore. Why did they take that out? It was great fun, and could have made an outstanding achievement.

Yeah, enhancement playstyle changes drastically with the different Talents you get.
You start out with slow 2-handers, and slowly beating mobs to death or praying for WF-procs, then switch to dual-wielding WF-imbued weapons and using Stormstrike + shocks in order to kill stuff, and finally when you get Maelstrom you can really go all out with instant casts and heals (and once you have the elemental talents you also go WF/Flametongue). Its quite a difference everytime you reach those levels, but they make the class more and more fun to play.

DKs however are also tremendously powerful - especially because you start out with fairly good equipment for leveling. Both are a good choice.

I'm leveling my DK as unholy - really fun being able to pull 8 mobs or so at a time and barely break a sweat - as long as Death Strike (the one that heals) + frost presence heals me fast enough I can go on indefinitely. And 2k critical Scourge Strikes at level 62 are quite impressive - not to mention the permanent ghoul, gargoyle, and Unholy Blight.

[Ender]

Reading upon my lore, they damn well better do a world event where everyone in saronite armor goes mad/becomes another faction hostile to horde and alliance/randomly has fear (or some similar effect) activate on them so long as they are wearing it.

[Civil War Man]

As far as I have been able to tell, since the ore used to make the crafted pieces is farmed from surface nodes, the saronite itself is pretty impure. I make this assumption because an Earthen NPC explained that pure saronite veins can only be found deep underground, and impure ore is the best explanation I can think of as to why he wasn't wigging out over my belt and gloves.

[Lord Revan]

I've doing lvl 80 Unholy DK tanking and while AoE threat is indeed amazing I tend to take way too much dmg when bone shield isn't up (or Icebound fortitude)

[Maxentius]

Right now WoW PvP was at the same place it was at the start of TBC. Defensive gear hasn't yet caught up with level 80 damage, so there is alot of glass cannons and really squishy players out there. It doesn't help that right now Rogues and Death Knights are very much the Flavor of the Month, so there is alot of pain doing down in melee range. It's kind of funny, since I've personally witnessed a level 80 shaman in Naxx gear die just about instantly to a rogue getting the drop on him... then the rogue hit vanish and would have done the same thing to me except that I threw a typhoon at the body of my shaman friend and managed to knock the rogue out of stealth. At that point, I threw down treants, hit starfall, cast abolish poison, and prayed. It only ended because the rogue had shit for HP and one of the first stars that hit him stunned him and my Starfire crit.

Of course, if you are a Naxx25 geared feral, in bear form you should have seventy five gijillion HP and respectable damage, plus a few tricks, so I imagine you are less afraid of rogues than me with half my gear being cloth.

Of course, the converse of all this is because DKs and Rogues and such at the flavor of the month, it has attracted ALOT of scrubs to those classes hoping to faceroll their way to free welfare epics. While even a scrub rogue can be dangerous, a bad DK is actually pretty tame. Still, it makes me miss when Warlocks were the PvP flavor of the month. I got very good at killing Shitty Warlocks.

God, I am so sick of all of this. I agree with you completely. It's not the Rogues, really -- I can deal with Rogues. I raided on a Rogue at 60 and PvP'd through half the Grand Marshal grind with him, so I like to think I know the tricks that most Rogues will play on me. That said, as a Holy Paladin, so long as I can keep Sacred Shield up and don't slack on cleansing it takes a Rogue forever to kill me. Generally long enough for my pocket warrior to come along and smear him into the ground.

There have been instances, though, where it's been a moot point. With my current gear (4/5 Tier 7 Heroic, Naxx 25/Malygos off-pieces) I have somewhere in the vicinity of 16,000 health; 20,000 if I'm in a premade and benefit from MOTW, PWF, and the like. A Rogue in half Deadly gear ran up to me and Ambushed me for 9,000 damage through plate and a Sacred Shield. Given that Sacred Shield absorbs IIRC 500+75% Spellpower, that means the absorbed damage was somewhere in the vicinity of 2k (provided I understand the absorption mechanic correctly; I always forget if it takes armor into account first or second). I likely would have been hit for 11,000 if not for the Sacred Shield.

So he ambushes me for more than half my health, and promptly pulls a Vanish/Ambush again for some similarly ungodly number and kills me before I can even hit my DS hotkey. It's fucking infuriating, to be honest. In Arenas, my 3s team specifically which we run as War/Priest/Pal, I have to be riding my BoP key constantly when we know there's a Rogue running around or he will kill the Priest before either myself or the warrior have a chance to intervene.

Death Knights are the real assholes, though. I don't know what Blizzard was thinking when they designed the class' PvP utilities. It's ridiculous and obscene; the fact that a melee class has a silence and an interrupt, one of them ranged, is ridiculous. Couple this with the retarded D&D glyph and it's idiotic 20% proc chance to horrify a target on every tick. Most of them have Strangulate glyphed too, so that the ability actually outranges my heals and judgments. Oh, and these cocksuckers get a Ghoul, Gargoyle, and Bone Armor too.

I am waiting for Death Knights to get nerfed into the ground like they deserve, so I can /rofl and /spit on all the skill-less, FOTM scrubs riding the coattails of a class overpowered and overoptimized for PvP when they get rocked by a raid healer. As to the other Death Knights, the ones who are actually good (We've several excellent DKs on our raiding roster), I am so, so sorry that you guys constantly get lumped in with the mouthbreathing retards that flock to Death Knights.

[Rahvin]

I respecced my Paladin Holy last night (leveled to 80 as Ret, of course) to give lvl 80 healing a try. I have to say, I'm impressed - I had given up on Holy after downranking was destroyed. Playing a Holy Paladin without the additional skills we got on the way to 80 and without downranking was both boring and frustrating - I had three heals, a situationally usefull buff (Beacon of Light), and drastically reduced mana efficiency compared to before that particular patch. After hitting 80, I can say that the situation is significantly better. Stat priorities on gear have changed significantly (with INT being far more important). The addition of Divine Favor and Sacred Shield have similarly changed the tactics of keeping the group alive. The new Judgment mechanics when specced deep Holy have similarly added something to do on trash pulls, and actually give a significant help in group healing/mana regen. Holy Shock is no longer the inefficient waste it used to be, and can now be used more often. With the increased emphasis on INT, our total mana pool has increased to the point where Holy Light is actually used frequently.

I'm drastically undergeared (mostly Kara and badge gear from pre-Wrath with a few blue replacements), but even so I was more than effective enough to do the job. I wish I was faster at gearing up for Heroic-level instances, but that's what happens when you have multiple alts to level and gear with limited playtime over the holidays.

[Maxentius]

You can really see that Blizzard is trying to get Paladins to use Holy Light more often, too. When I was Holy pre, and during Burning Crusade, I rarely used it; perhaps once or twice a fight if things looked like they were going badly. My mana pool was just too limited and the spell too expensive to justify it as anything more than a situational OH SHIT button.

I like this change, though. There's that Badge Libram to reduce the cost, and the four-piece set bonus for Tier 7 further reduces the mana price. You can turn Holy Light into a ghetto AOE heal too when you glyph it, especially with the upcoming patch increasing the range on that effect by thirty yards. Offhand, I'm pretty sure there's another item somewhere that further cheapens it, but I can't recall anything specific so I might be hallucinating. But regardless, Blizzard has given Holy Paladins a lot of new tools, almost all of which are exceptional. I'm still a little iffy on Beacon of Light -- it's great on Patchwerk and Malygos and Sapphiron, but on other fights I don't really use it at all, and when I do the uptime is nowhere near 100%.

Sacred Shield is just delicious, though. I think my FoLs approach 85% crit on a target with an active shield.

[Gil Hamilton]

Death Knights are the real assholes, though. I don't know what Blizzard was thinking when they designed the class' PvP utilities. It's ridiculous and obscene; the fact that a melee class has a silence and an interrupt, one of them ranged, is ridiculous. Couple this with the retarded D&D glyph and it's idiotic 20% proc chance to horrify a target on every tick. Most of them have Strangulate glyphed too, so that the ability actually outranges my heals and judgments. Oh, and these cocksuckers get a Ghoul, Gargoyle, and Bone Armor too.

I am waiting for Death Knights to get nerfed into the ground like they deserve, so I can /rofl and /spit on all the skill-less, FOTM scrubs riding the coattails of a class overpowered and overoptimized for PvP when they get rocked by a raid healer. As to the other Death Knights, the ones who are actually good (We've several excellent DKs on our raiding roster), I am so, so sorry that you guys constantly get lumped in with the mouthbreathing retards that flock to Death Knights.

Actually, I think Blizzard knew exactly what they were doing with Death Knights. It's a brand new class. I think they deliberately made them absurdly at the moment so and enormous amount of people won't just make a DK, do the quest line, and stop. There has been a glut of DKs in game, which is Beta Testing Part 2 on them. So I think alot of Death Knights stuff is on the chopping block. That's already started and why DK aren't getting the same treatment as Ret Paladins when they became the FotM PvP Ubermensch for a while. Chances are DKs will be gradually eroded down to where everyone else is, but right now I honestly think that they were deliberately made Super Awesome Hero Class so Blizzard could continue testing them even after they were implemented.

Rogues are a different story. I don't honestly think Blizzard knows what the fuck they are going to do about rogues in PvP. Everyone except some rogues acknowledge that rogues are insane right now and need to get on the nerf block. But Blizzard has two problems with them.

One is that sandblasting Rogues in the way they need to be sandblasted will have a strong effect on PvE as well as PvP. Blizzard, having an allergy to people complaining at them, is extremely hesitant to do this. They had the same problem with Resto Druids back in Burning Crusade in PvP. They couldn't address the real problem of why they were so dominant because it was a core class mechanic, so they kept futzing around the edges trying figure out how they could make them less obscene without causing a whole other slew of problem. Rogues have the same problem, they can't strip rogue damage output down directly or really nerf all the damn annoying things rogues do to get out of jail free if their first attack was survived (like Blind or Vanish or CoS), so chances are they are going to nibble away at the sides and tweak this and that while not doing that much.

The second is that it's argued that Defense hasn't had a chance to catch up with the Offense out there, which is something that is true all around. You can argue MOST of the DPS classes are glass cannons right now. While its not a compelling argument (500 resilience still isn't going to do much to stop a rogue right now), it's something that will be used as an excuse to stall Blizzard actually having to do something. They'll say to wait until more of the population has a set of savage/hateful/deadly and then see if Rogues are still kicking ass.

[Rahvin]

You can really see that Blizzard is trying to get Paladins to use Holy Light more often, too. When I was Holy pre, and during Burning Crusade, I rarely used it; perhaps once or twice a fight if things looked like they were going badly. My mana pool was just too limited and the spell too expensive to justify it as anything more than a situational OH SHIT button.

I like this change, though. There's that Badge Libram to reduce the cost, and the four-piece set bonus for Tier 7 further reduces the mana price. You can turn Holy Light into a ghetto AOE heal too when you glyph it, especially with the upcoming patch increasing the range on that effect by thirty yards. Offhand, I'm pretty sure there's another item somewhere that further cheapens it, but I can't recall anything specific so I might be hallucinating.

And even with subpar gear I crit (frequently) for 13k. That's one hell of a good ability when it's fully buffed, with items to reduce the cost, and with a massive mana pool to support it. Some Healadins even chain cast Holy Light, something I've never even dreamt of doing.

But regardless, Blizzard has given Holy Paladins a lot of new tools, almost all of which are exceptional. I'm still a little iffy on Beacon of Light -- it's great on Patchwerk and Malygos and Sapphiron, but on other fights I don't really use it at all, and when I do the uptime is nowhere near 100%.

I haven't seen many real uses for Beacon so far. When there's significant raid healing due to AoE it's nice so that you don't need to worry so much about the tank, and I assume it would be useful in PvP, but honestly I consider it pretty lackluster for a 51-point talent. There's nothing else better to spend that point on, but it lacks the awesomeness of many other 51-point talents, including the other two available to Paladins.

Sacred Shield is just delicious, though. I think my FoLs approach 85% crit on a target with an active shield.

Agreed. Mine are around thereabouts now as well, and that makes us staggaringly mana efficient when using FoL (which was already a very mana efficient heal). Aside from that, the damage mitigation is nontrivial - 500+75% of spellpower is a very nice chunk, and the buff reappears about every 6 seconds (assuming the player is getting hit continuously). And since the cost is low and it has no cooldown, I've used it to buff the melee and pets in my group - last night our Druid and my girlfriend's Felguard were taking some hits, and Sacred Shield made a very noticeable reduction in the damage they were taking.

[Oskuro]

Sorry to intrude into your rules discussion, but I'm pissed, on to the rant:

How to say this. I mean... Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make it so a single lvl71+ player can, by itself, completely lock down quest nodes (aka towns)?!

I'm tired of seeing high level players (specially DKs) massacring low level towns, and thus causing untold amounts of grief to players in the area. I mean, you can't even escape this by going into non-pvp areas/servers, as NPCs are always attackable.

And don't get me started on city raids. It's become ludicrous. I've seen 3-man groups tearing through a city, the guards being nothing more than a nuisance.

Either Blizzard did not foresee the implications of the power increase in the expansion (or they did but the fix is coming), or they did it on purpose, to force more players into buying the expansion, or, hopefully not, they are intentionally catering to the assholes who actually enjoy this shit.

Regardless, I'm all for World PVP, and don't mind people raiding towns once in a while, what I find disgusting is to have a single player sitting merrily in the middle of the Crossroads with absolutely nothing to challenge it, nor NPC, nor player. If you can't flee to the saftey of your faction's town, then what's the point? To be cannon fodder for players who gain nothing from killing you save the grief they cause? Way to go!

*grumble* I'm so looking forward to the end of the holidays so the schoolkids get back to not being online so often.

Endrant.

[Ghost Rider]

Sorry to intrude into your rules discussion, but I'm pissed, on to the rant:

How to say this. I mean... Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make it so a single lvl71+ player can, by itself, completely lock down quest nodes (aka towns)?!

I'm tired of seeing high level players (specially DKs) massacring low level towns, and thus causing untold amounts of grief to players in the area. I mean, you can't even escape this by going into non-pvp areas/servers, as NPCs are always attackable.

And don't get me started on city raids. It's become ludicrous. I've seen 3-man groups tearing through a city, the guards being nothing more than a nuisance.

Either Blizzard did not foresee the implications of the power increase in the expansion (or they did but the fix is coming), or they did it on purpose, to force more players into buying the expansion, or, hopefully not, they are intentionally catering to the assholes who actually enjoy this shit.

Regardless, I'm all for World PVP, and don't mind people raiding towns once in a while, what I find disgusting is to have a single player sitting merrily in the middle of the Crossroads with absolutely nothing to challenge it, nor NPC, nor player. If you can't flee to the saftey of your faction's town, then what's the point? To be cannon fodder for players who gain nothing from killing you save the grief they cause? Way to go!

*grumble* I'm so looking forward to the end of the holidays so the schoolkids get back to not being online so often.

Endrant.

LOL, you think this is even the first time? Seriously this is an ancient bitch, and one while I understand, is something completely within the scope of the game. Griefing is something that happens all too often and Blizz has shown it does not give a fuck, especially when the bitching over Dishonorable Kills did nothing. And while many have claimed why not make quest givers unable to be killed, Blizz has shown they do not give a fuck.

This problem has become more noticable because of Shatt and now Dalaran, because the level 80's all have bank alts to do any AH transactions.