Protection Paladin: 4.0.6

Hey Gang!

I wanted to touch on some of the changes that Paladins have seen since the Shattering (4.0.3 & 4.0.6). To be quite honest, Paladins haven't really seen any major changes. Shocking, I know!

Fuubaar is currently sporting all blues & epics 346+ ilevel at the moment and has only set foot into one Raid thus far (Concave of 4 Angry Elementals). She's feeling really good survivability & threat wise. Fully buffed, I'm flexing 160k+ health with little to no threat issues. Overall, I'm extremely happy with where Paladin tanks are right now.

CURRENT SPEC:

I'm using the 0/33/8 spec that really has a nice mix of survivabilty and threat. It works really well for heroics and I can't see much of a change for Raiding either. I only left out two spells in the Prot tree. Hallowed Ground because I rarely if ever use Consecrate so why waste the talent points. I also didnt invest any talent points in Hammer of Justice because I only use it on occasion to stun annoying mobs.

I picked up Rule of Law, Crusade, and Improved Judgement in the Ret tree. I did not put any points in Pursuit of Justice because I didn't feel that anything was worth giving up points in to pick up minor running speed. If I were to have to give anything up for it though, it might be Grand Crusader. I, personally, really enjoy the procs for the extra Avenger's Shield option.

CURRENT GLYPHS:

Prime Glyphs:

- Threat:

        * Hammer of the Righteous (AoE)

        * Seal of Truth ( Huge boost in Expertise)

        * Shield of the Righteous (Single Target)

- Survivability:

        * Seal of Insight (Replacement for SoT)
        * Word of Glory (Replacement for SotR)

Note: I use the three threat Glyphs because I don't really notice myself as having survivability issues. I'm close friends with my two healers... they would let me know if I felt squishy.

Major Glyphs:
- Recommended:
        * Focused Shield (Threat but remember to keep an eye on surrounding mobs as they wont be recieving any threat at all)
        * Holy Wrath ( Stun to mobs that we are seeing quite often in Cata)
- Optional:
        * Dazing Shield (This just gives you back your Daze from the good ol' days)
        * Lay on Hands (Shorten the Cooldown)
        * Divine Protection (40% magic reduction/ 0% Physical)

Note: I use the top three in that list. Personally, I enjoy the Dazing Shield effect. I've also tried not using the Focused Shield because it gives me more AoE threat. I just have to be more picky when I use my Avenger's shield.

Minor Glyphs:
Just pick three that you you the most.

NEW CHANGES:

One of the minor changes that Paladins have seen thus far into the Shattering is that during the 4.0.6 patch drop, Paladins got their very own basespell interupt that's off of the Global Cooldown!

And the peasents rejoice!

Rebuke has been a welcomed addition to my party. There are many many many interupt fights in cataclysm and my Hammer of Justice and Avenger's Shield just weren't cutting the Mustard. I didnt realize how much I would use this spell until they finally gave it to us. This also made me realize how much I love DPS who actually interupt! <3 My DPS Interupters!

The other, "stealth change" that we recieved was in regards to Holy Power still being aquired regardless of the outcome of a Crusader Strike or a Hammer of the Righteous be it a miss, dodge, parry or block.

There was a recent Blue Post on the offical Forums: mainly saying that this was intended and that we should not generate Holy Power if our attacks dont land. Needless to say, Paladins of all specs were up in arms about this. It really hit Prot the hardest though. Since ret is suppose to be hit capped anyways, they shouldnt be missing Crusader Strike. Thus, not really noticing a difference. The thing is, it is extremely difficult to be hit capped as prot without giving up a lot in return. Many tanks feared that this would not only screw up their rotations but hinder their threat generations greatly.

When I got home to test it out, I did notice the change in my rotation from the missed Holy Power. It was rather jarring at first but you got used to having your rotation be just a bit longer to get 3 Holy Power or to choose not to wait for all three and use the weaker ability anyways. After reading both the Offical Forums and my Maintankadin Forums, it wasn't as bad as it was made out to be. The Sky was not falling....

I believe that the biggest issue that people had with this stealth nerf was that it was... stealthed... and you know how much we hate stealthed rogues. If Blizzard would have come out and said,

"Hey Pallies, just wanted to let you know that if your Crusader Strike misses, you wont get Holy Power from now on. Calm down folks, I know that we said that we wouldn't do this because it would make Prot Paladins feel RNG but we had to change something about you to piss you off! The Mages were getting upset. We had to give them something. Suck it up Paladins, we haven't nerfed Word Of Glory yet..."

I would have shut my mouth in an instant :-)

So yeah, nothing too terribly exciting.



Here's an LOLCAT because this post is boring.



<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

Enchantment List Updated

With great gear comes great responsibility. That responsibility is in the form of gemming and enchanting your gear. Being an enchanter m'self, I've always tried to have the best 'chants on. I may not always grab the exorbitantly priced epic gems, but I will have the good enchants, by the Light. Or Shadow, in my case.

I've made an exact copy of this post as a static page on the left. That is the one I'll keep up to date as I get more information, but I'll point comments back to here.

Affliction Warlock Enchantment List (remember, spirit is useless)

• Head - Arcanum of Hyjal (Hyjal Rep)
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone (Therazane Rep)
• Chest - Mighty Stats or Peerless Stats (peerless is pretty expensive right now)
• Pants - Master's Spellthread (if you are a Tailor) or Powerful Enchanted Spellthread (from Tailors, more expensive)
• Boots - Precision (can reforge something if you're over cap), (added haste), or Mastery
  
• Bracers - Precision (can reforge something if you're over cap) or Mighty Intellect
• Gloves - Haste
• Ring - Intellect (if you're an Enchanter)
• Cloak - Lightweave Embroidery (if you're a Tailor) or Greater Intellect
• Weapon - Hurricane or Power Torrent
• Off Hand - Superior Intellect
  

DPS Death Knight Enchantment List (Nitro Boosts go on your belt now)

• Head - Arcanum of Wildhammer/Dragonmaw (rep) or the PvP Head Enchant for 2k Honor (can't find the name right now)
• Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Jagged Stone (Therazane Rep)
• Chest - Mighty Stats or Peerless Stats (peerless is pretty expensive right now)
• Pants - Dragonscale Leg Armor
• Boots - Earthen Vitality, Lavawalker, Mastery, or Precision
• Bracers - Major Strength, Greater Crit, Greater Expertise, or Precision
• Gloves -Greater Expertise, Greater Mastery, Mighty Strength
• Ring - Strength (if you're an enchanter)
• Cloak (can now stack engineering and enchants) - Greater Crit
• Weapon - Rune of Fallen Crusader on one and Rune of Razorice (if you're Frost) on the other

Paladin Tank

I was going to get Fuu to create a similar list, but she informed me that it's already been done better elsewhere. So I'll just pass along the link instead.

Don't forget to grab an Ebonsteel Belt Buckle for your belt as well!

Did I miss any?

Perky Paladin Patch Notes: 4.0.6

Hey Gang!

Wanted to get these out there for my Die Hard Paladins! /flex
This is going to be a HUGE WALL OF TEXT THAT WILL CRIT YOU FOR 3 BILLION! you have been warned. I've Bolded the headers of each section so you can find them easier if you only want to look at specific stuff. I've made a few Italic comments next to the notes themselves. Not all have them because not all are really revelent to me. *Looking at you Holy Paladins and your Intellect ways*

Enjoy :-)

Paladin Notes:

•The mana costs of Blessing of Might and Blessing of Kings have been increased by approximately 217%, making them roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.
•Crusader Strike weapon damage percent has been increased to 135%, up from 115%. woot! That helps out both Ret & Prot
•Divine Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.
•Divine Plea now lasts for 9 seconds, down from 15. It grants 4% mana per tick, instead of 2%, for a total of 12% mana, up from 10%.
•Flash of Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.
•Forbearance Oh Forbearance. When will you get your act together and stay consistant for one damn patch?!
     ◦The duration has been lowered to 1 minute, down from 2.
     ◦Lay on Hands now causes Forbearance on the target. It used to only cause it when cast on the paladin.   This was an old design from when Divine Protection caused Forbearance and the paladin didn't want to prevent a tank from using their defensive cooldown.
     ◦Lay on Hands cannot be a critical effect and will not be affected by most abilities which modify healing (such as Beacon of Light). In addition, Lay on Hands is no longer on the global cooldown. Fine for tanks since the health scaled off of us. I highly doubt that a dying mage has a bigger health pool than you. If so... you're doin it wrong. Also, why are you doing it to a mage?! WTF is wrong with you!
     ◦Since only Divine Shield, Lay on Hands and Hand of Protection cause Forbearance, the tooltips have been adjusted to better explain the mechanic. Well, thanks? Mainly, I just cast it when needed and if I get yelled at, I keep that in mind that I can't do that for this instance. Perhaps they'll change that tomorrow...
•Holy Light mana cost has been increased by approximately 10%.
•Holy Wrath no longer counts nearby critters when dividing damage among its targets. I use this as a critter killer ;-)
•Inquisition is no longer dispellable.
•Rebuke can now be trained by all paladins at level 54. Existing characters will need to visit their trainer, even if they had talented Rebuke before. I'm actually rather excited about this Spell. Being able to interupt people quickly will make my life so much easier. Now to make sure that I'm hit capped...
•Seal of Truth: All single target attacks (including Judgement, Hammer of Wrath, Exorcism, and Templar's Verdict) can now trigger this seal. The quicker that this stacks, the faster I can get threat. I'm totally ok with that!

Talent Specializations

     ◦Holy

■Aura Mastery: This ability no longer increases the benefit granted by Crusader Aura.
■Denounce now has a spell overlay.
■Protector of the Innocent heals for 30% less.

     ◦Protection

■Eternal Glory: The chance to not consume Holy Power from this talent now also applies to not consuming the clearcasting effect generated by Divine Purpose.
■Vindication no longer allows Hammer of Justice to interrupt stun-immune targets. With Rebuke baseline, this functionality is no longer necessary. I'll be replacing Rebuke as my go to Interupt. Hammer of Justice can hang out with Turn Evil and have themselves a pitty party.

     ◦Retribution

■Act of Sacrifice will no longer cause Cleanse to remove movement impairing effects from vehicles the paladin is riding.
■Divine Purpose: The chance for applicable abilities to generate Holy Power has been reduced to 7/15%, down from 20/40%, but instead of generating 1 Holy Power, the next applicable ability used consumes no Holy Power and acts as if the paladin has 3 Holy Power.
■Divine Storm weapon damage percent increased from 80% to 100%.
■Hand of Light (Mastery): A percentage of the damage done by Templar's Verdict, Crusader Strike, and Divine Storm is done as additional Holy damage. This Mastery now grants a 2.1% increase to Holy damage per mastery, down from 2.5%.
■Repentance is no longer broken from damage done by Censure (Seal of Truth).
■The Rebuke talent has been replaced with a new passive talent, Sacred Shield. Paladins who had Rebuke before will automatically have Sacred Shield. Sacred When reduced below 30% health, paladins gain the Sacred Shield effect. The Sacred Shield absorbs X damage and increases healing received by 20%. Lasts 15 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds. Undispellable.
■Seals of Command will no longer trigger twice on each swing with Seal of Truth.
■Zealotry is no longer dispellable.

Glyphs

◦Glyph of Divine Plea now adds 6% mana, for a total of 18% over 9 seconds.

Paladin Bug Fixes

◦The Silence debuff from Avenger's Shield was using the Dazed visual effect, and its Daze debuff did not have a visible effect. This has been remedied. K? I just figured that if I hit someone with Avenger's Shield, that they were silenced and if they walked slow, they were Dazed. It's not Rocket Surgery!
◦The damage bonus from Communion is no longer applied even when the paladin has no paladin auras active.
◦Divine Storm no longer incorrectly highlights when Hand of Light procs.
◦Exorcism no longer re-targets whomever it does damage to when it finishes casting.
◦The healing amount in the buff tooltip for Holy Radiance is now accurate.
◦Pursuit of Justice is now providing Holy Power when the paladin gets stunned by the Fire mage talent Impact. Conversely, Pursuit of Justice is no longer granting Holy Power when the Paladin is hit by Holy Wrath.
◦Repentance tooltip now states that it does not break Censure damage.
◦Rank 1 of Shield of the Templar was reducing the cooldown of Guardian of Ancient Kings by 45 seconds, which is inconsistent with the scaling of ranks 2 and 3. This has been adjusted.
◦The tooltip for Tower of Radiance indicated that Holy Light would generate a charge of Holy Power. This has been fixed.
◦Word of Glory no longer resets the swing timer.

Glyph Fixes

■The damage-over-time effect of Exorcism added by Glyph of Exorcism is now correctly affected by Exorcism's damage.
■The tooltip for Holy Wrath is now updated to reflect changes when Glyph of Holy Wrath is active.
■The Glyph of Light of Dawn is now updating the tooltip for Light of Dawn.
■The Glyph of Seal of Insight now requires level 32 to be consistent with when Seal of Insight can be learned from the trainer.
■The Glyph of Templar's Verdict is now updating the tooltip of Templar's Verdict.

And there you have it. Overall, nothing to write home about. We get a new useful spell, Rebuke, for interupts which will be crazy handy with all of the interupts that are required in heroics and a few little buffs here & there. I'm quite happy with where Fuu is right now as prot. My threat is decently high, my DPS is around 5-6k and I've got a large toolbox to help out where ever I can to minimize incoming damage to everyone, give a little HoT to nearby injured folks, and have plenty of ways to get myself out of near death experiences.

How do you feel that this patch is treating your Pally?

<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

Protection Paladin Rotation: Max Threat Verse Survivability

Hey Gang!

So, it's been some time now since 4.0.1 dropped and our new spells, Holy Power, etc. had thrown our original rotations into a Cement Mixer. For many of us, it felt very foreign to us because many of the things that we took as "sacred" are no more.

After hitting 85, training all of my new spells, I was anxious to see how all of these new spells fit together. We gained Inquisition at level 81. Which at first seems pretty much only useful for our Retribution pals. It's a DPS increase when you use Holy power and scales with how many stacks we had while using it. If you use it with all three stacks of Holy Power, Inquisition lasts for 12 seconds.

My first reaction was why do I want to waste my precious Holy Power on a Damage increase? I have two extremely powerful spells that I can choose to use instead. Shield of the Righteous that does huge amounts of single target threat (currently critting for almost 20k with three stacks) and putting up Holy Shield that increases the amount of damage I mitigate by 10% and Word of Glory that gives me a very free self healing. Why do I, as a tank, give two Kodo Poops about Inquisition? Well, after further reading over at my favorite Forums, I saw theorycrafters proposing that if you use Inquisition with 3 stacks of Holy power, it will last you 12 seconds. Our rotation, from start to finish, is only 9 seconds.

This got my brain rolling...

Well, if I could have Inquisition on for the duration of my rotation in all the while working my Holy Power back up, it will last me until I get back to hitting SotR again. My brain just exploded at the thought of all that delicious threat that I would be creating. Om nom nom!

But here's the beauty of this whole entire thing. Holy power takes 9 seconds to rack up to 3. Most fights don't last very long. 18 Seconds is like an eternity when it comes to mob & boss fights. Having to wait 18 seconds to have your Holy Shield up feels like having unprotected sex with strangers and then deciding mid way that you probably shouldn't be doing what you're doing...

/gross

So brain, how do we get to play with our "Holy Shit Threat Happy Fun Time" without feeling "unprotected" for 18 seconds?

The answer is Divine Plea! When you hit Divine Plea (if Talented... which you better have it talented or I'll be sad!) It gives you an automatic 3 stacks of Holy Power right away before ever having to do anything! Hurray!

What I found to be the best single target threat rotation to be:
(Glyphed: Focused Shield) Avengers Shield-Divine Plea-Inquisition-Crusader Strike-Judgement-Crusader Strike- AS/ (Holy Wrath if AS didn't proc or off Cooldown)- Crusader Strike- Shield of the Righteous (repeat until dead... not you! The Boss!)

With this rotation you are getting the full effect of Inquisition through your entire rotation and not having to wait the entire 18 seconds to get your Holy Shield up. Best of both worlds. With this kind of threat start, it would be extremely hard for anyone to pull it off of you. This is the Ultimate front loaded threat move. Hell throw in your Wings and you have become a monster! Even your trigger happy mage would be hard pressed to pry that Internet Dragon off of you. With this kind of a lead on your threat, letting Vengence kick in will only make the ride that much easier.

Now, if you are more interested in AoE instead of Single target. It's pretty easy to make a few minor changes. Unglyph your Avenger's Shield so you are hitting 3 targets instead of 1. Replace Crusader Strike with Hammer of the Righteous and use Holy Wrath & Consecrate in your "off times".  If mobs aren't hitting too hard, you could even change your Aura to Retribution (if you don't already have a Ret Pally with you).

If Survivability is what really butters your bread, then I suggest a different strategy. I would focus more on keeping up your Holy Shield up for that additional mitigation and spot healing with Word of Glory. Again, I would pop Divine Plea before the pull, Shoot the mob/boss, use Shield of the Righteous and go to town gaining back your Holy Power Stacks. Once to three, pop Word of Glory. This is really nice even if you are topped off because (again if you specced into it) will create a bubble with the over heals. Rotate Shield of the Righteous with Word of Glory and you should be golden. Healers will cheer & babes will weep at how awesome you are at Surviving the most brutal content that Cataclysm could throw at you.

Now get out there & make your healers proud!

/slaps you on the ass for good luck!

<3 Your Friendly Neightborhood Fuubaar

Cataclysm Leveling Specs

Got a nice little request from reader Zorch the other day to share my leveling plans for Cataclysm.  We are on the cusp of the expansion where we will once again be encourage to reach a new plateau.  This one is only five levels away, so might go by quicker than those of years past.  The levels are much higher, though, so we may be surprised at the length too.  Either way, it's been a while.  We also have new trees to contend with, so there's plenty to discuss.  I'm going to try to talk about both my 'lock and DK, and I've convinced Fuu to pass on some brief Paladin info too.  I'll mash it all up into this post for one stop shopping.  'Tis the season. 

Affliction Warlock Leveling Spec
My primary spec remains Affliction.  It's what I plan to raid with, even if it's not the top spec, so I'll want to get some practice in with it on the route to 85 as well.  With the pared down trees, I don't really need to spec differently for a leveling build.  I can just work toward what I plan to raid with at 85.

The Affliction spec will have good self healing that will make it useful for questing, but really I'm interesting in dungeon running with it.  Rumor has it we may be called on to CC a bit, and with elementals being the big baddies in Cataclysm, Banish may come in handy quite a bit.  Additionally, Soul Swap provides a powerful spell that serves to make us dreadfully efficient in the dungeon, target-at-time paradigm.

My starting spec will be what I'm raiding with now.  See this post for specifics.  First, I plan to fill up Bane and then move on to Improved Soul Fire.  ISF will entice me to utilize my instant-cast soul fires a lot more in order to give me a temporary haste boost.  I imagine it'll almost be sort of like how we used Life Tap with the old glyph.  We'll want to use it to start, and then a couple more times throughout the fight.  We probably will not be able to keep it up like we did with the LT buff, but it will be helpful like a trinket.

The last point will likely go into Demonic Embrace for the Stamina buff.  It'll add a bit more survivability to the spec and seems to be the best of the low hanging fruit.  The only choice I can see is that I might want to take a point or two in Improved Fear if it's usage as CC becomes vital.  That may be my only respec.  If you find yourself using Fear a lot, don't be afraid to shuffle a point or two that way.  I'd take it out of Demonic Embrace and likely just use one, but really it just depends on if the utility is worth it.  There is that glyph out there that helps too.

Demonology Warlock Leveling Spec
I've traditionally really enjoyed having a Demonology off-spec for soloing.  I expect this not to change come Cataclysm.  Demonology traditionally provides hardiness and better burst ability.  Depending on how fast stuff seems to be dying, I like to have this spec to pop into.  Also, the AoE capability of this spec far outstrips anything else, so it's great for farming and kill quests.  Really it just depends on you can survive the gathering or not.

Like Affliction, I'll start here, and then fill up Shadow and Flame and Improved Soul Fire.  In this case, that basically does it.  The time to use this spec would be for AoE and quick dying trash.  If I need to be precise or have CC, I'm going to roll with Affliction.  This is a great spec to have in my back pocket, as it were.  I like to use this if I PvP on my 'lock as well.  The Hand of Gul'dan spell and talent makes it pretty effective, though I normally PvP on my DK, since it's what I rolled her for.  So pretty simple here for my secondary spec.

Dual Wield Frost Death Knight Leveling Spec
I plan to PvP level this toon.  As such, my spec reflects PvP utility while still being pretty solid for group DPS.  I'll start here, and then fill out Improved Icy Talons, Epidemic, and Bladed Armor.  I love howling blast with the slowing effect for PvP, as well as utility of the Frost spec.  I think the DW makes it a great PvP spec.  DK's can be pretty solid against casters, who seem to have the upper edge right now.  I popped in a spell reflect meta-gem, and your anti-magic shield really comes in handy.  Plus you can grip and rip, which is fun, and Icy Chains provides a nice root.  A Killing Machine powered obliterate is great for a killing blow.  The added bonus to my 'lock self is that I still get to play with DoTs here.

Fuubaar's Paladin Leveling Plans
Yes, I'm cutting in because, damn it! I'm important! I'll be continuing to level Fuubaar as Protection like I have every expansion. Now, leveling as prot is a bit easier for me because I have my pocket DPS. If you've never leveled as prot, I will warn you, it is a bit slower but you will never die. The main idea was that you would round up some mobs in the area and AoE them down. Now, from what I've heard from people in the Cataclysm Beta is that these mobs hit harder and are not meant for a DPS class to be able to pull more than a few at a time without running into trouble. Now, I'm going to assume since we have more survivability and lack in the DPS department that we would still be able to pull more mobs than a DPS but it will just take even longer to burn them down if you're soloing. I would highly suggest when pulling questing mobs, to test them out first before going head first into 10 of them at once o.0

Anyways, Fuu's talent plan will look a little different than what she's using now for Raiding. Mainly, from what I've found is that as long as you have the "Core" Talents, pretty much everything else is a bonus.

Major "must have" Talents in the protection tree are:

• Divinity- Mana and healing are going to be extremely important for healers and easier you can be on them, the happier they will be. We love our healers & we wont them to love us back. <3 Also, I know that I ranted a bit about this talent before being so worthless in Wrath but our other options aren't really all that great either.
• Judgements of the Just - Survivability
• Toughness- Survivability
• Sanctuary- Our Crit Immunity
• Hammer of the Righteous- Our AoE tanking ability
• Wrath of the Lightbringer- Huge DPS/Threat Boost Talent
• Shield of the Righteous- High Single target Holy Power Dump Threat Move (also triggers Holy Shield)
• Vindication- Attack Power Debuff on Mobs/ Bosses aka Survivability
• Holy Shield - Now passive. Is triggered by SotR and now increases our Damage Blocked (10% increase) rather than increased block rate.
• Sacred Duty- Passive Threat Bonus. "Set it and forget it!"
• Shield of the Templar- Avenger's Shield Cooldown.
• Ardent Defender- Our, now, new non-passive 1UP

With your left over talent points, you can pretty much put them where you feel is most useful for you. If you like to pvp as prot, then look for Hammer of Justice for faster stuns. If you want to focus more on AoE tanking, look at Hallowed Ground for cheaper Consecrations. Personally, I'll be looking more towards flexibility for chain pulling questing mobs so I'll want longer ranged Judgment pulls over in the Ret tree & cheaper WoG with Eternal Glory for soloing some of the tougher stuff.

If you would like to read further information regarding some highly theorycrafted Talent breakdowns, glyphs, gems, enchants, etc. I highly suggest you pay Theck over at Maintainadin a visit.

Ful's Meta Plans
I haven't worked at all on a tanking spec for my DK; I just don't feel like doing it since the death of DW Frost tanking.  That was sort of a fun little niche before, and I haven't really gotten excited about speccing into the Blood tree.  I've heard tales of disease-less tanking, but I just don't have the motive or opportunity to try it out yet, hence why I've not updated my guide.  I will likely remove the link.  I may get back to it in the future, but for now it's on hold.  Also, I'm going to hold off on updating the Enchanting List until I get more familiar with the expansion.  For now, those enchants are still pretty solid, though you'll want to watch out for things like taking spirit as a 'lock because it's worthless now.

Quite simply, these are my plans for leveling in Cataclysm.  My 'lock will be leveled through dungeons and quests.  My DK through PvP.  I also plan to roll a Druid Worgen from scratch for a healing capable toon.  I'm sure I'll write some about that along the way.  It seems to me that the pared down trees make things like a specific "leveling" spec a relic of the past.  The only wild card is really how much you, individually, will be required to use certain CC spells.  Thus, you may want to shift one or two points around, but the base is still there.  I can't say I'm altogether displeased with the simplicity of speccing, though it does make for less interesting writing.  Look for some reflections once I get rolling and I'll update my guides once I hit 85.  Definitely hit me up with any questions you might have along the way, and I'll at the very least try to research and make an educated response, even if I haven't experienced it yet.  Otherwise, pleasant leveling!

With sheer boredom comes Inspiration!

Hey Gang!

Happy Monday!

So I heard over at MMO-Champion that 4.0.3 is going to go live this week (perhaps tomorrow?). They state that 4.0.3 is not the landscape changer but 4.0.3a is. WTF? Is anyone else as confused as I am? It's sorta ridiculous. When I think about an expansion and patch numbers, I always thought that when you change the first number, that was the BIG set up for the expansion to come. Yes, 4.0.1 brought on some of the largest changes in the game that sets up the base stuff for Cataclysm. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they gave us some time to adjust before feeding us to the proverbial worgen but then we were all told that 4.0.3 was the WHOLE CRAP EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BURN TO THE GROUND AND DEATHWING WILL EAT YOU patch. Now, what has 4.0.3 turned into? Oh yeah, bug fixes and an additional set up for the world breaking.
/facepalm

So, let me get this straight. 4.0.3a is the actual Shattering and that makes 4.0.3 the prep for the Shattering... so, what does that make 4.0.1? A preparation for the preparation of the Shattering? Ummm K? Now I've heard that Zul'Garrub and it's lovely Mountable contents are going away in 4.0.3. Does this mean 4.0.3 or 4.0.3a? Color me confused.

Well, whatever. I guess it will happen when it happens :-/

Regardless of the patch confusion, I'm really enjoying the flow of the Events. I heard that the next phase went live on Friday. Normally I know everything (HA) and I would be more aware of this stuff but I completely missed that boat. I'll have to log on before our raid tonight and take a peek at it. I'm going to guess that it's just more forward progress of the story. Mainly, adding a few more quests. I'm totally ok with that. I've got the achievement "Tripping the Rifts" on two of my toons and I'm up to date on the quests on two of them except for the latest Friday additions which I will correct this evening :)

Since Fuubaar and her Posse downed the Lame King last Monday, my brain has switched from Raiding to preparation for Cataclysm. I've been messing with soloing/ questing specs for Fuu and that's pretty much it for her. When Zul'Gurub was announced to be gone along with the mounts and Reputation, I freaked out and wanted to go in there and farm every lock out. I did this a few times and then I came to the realization that I just don't really care. I mean, the mounts are pretty cool but I have horrible luck so I'll probably not get them. Then I looked at the faction reputation and that really sealed the deal. The recipes from the vender aren't useful and after I learned them, I would completely forget about them. Yes, I could have those "useful" 10 achievement points for becoming exalted with them and 1 more exalted faction to tack up to my 40 but that's about it. Call me pessimistic, but I've got a billion other things to do in the game than become annoyed by the stupid spinny trolls. They can go DIAFF for all I care.

Ok, I think I just need more coffee cause I totally sound like a grouch pants today...

On a more, exciting note, I got my Third 80 last night. Tamedfuu has now joined the ranks. Let me tell you how slow I leveled... it was so slow that some of my guildies stayed online to watch it occur. I believe that a few died of starvation.  Funny story, I could have pushed it on Saturday but I wanted to play Civilization 5 instead. Shhhh don't tell my guildies >.<

Anyways, my main goal with this toon wasn't really to hit 80. It was to max out her two professions. She has Mining and Engineering on her and I felt that they would both come in handy for Cataclysm. Mining is a no brainer since I already had a max Jewelcrafter and I had to buy all of my ore or raw gems to cut & sell. It really cut into my profit. I also wanted an engineer because who doesn't LOVE engineering? I mean, it's an odd mix of all of the other professions combined with a touch of flare. You can make gear, you can enchant your gear, and come Cataclysm, you can gem your gear... with a GEAR! (or cog if you're going to get technical). I wasn't really pushing for 80 but I ended up getting it through Battlegrounds when I was mindlessly circling Zul'Derek looking for Cobalt nodes. I did the occasional Instance to break that up but I pretty much only did one or two of those a day because the queue times were too long and I just didn't really care for the time investment. The moment I dinged 80 last night, I had maxed out mining and my Engineering had just hit 425. That's good enough to pick up the next level of Engineering whatever crazy name they call it. My guess is something like Ultra Uber God of Engineering. You can't get any more epic than that! I believe that I ran enough battle grounds to get a few Wrathful pieces and perhaps enough points from my PvE dungeons that I might have a few pieces from there as well.

Overall, leveling, even if you go slow, is obtainable regardless of what you enjoy. This is awesome! I very rarely did quests on Tamed. I would have to say that 85% of the Exp that I gained was through pvp.

So, this brings me to my last ADD thought of this post. When I rolled Fuubaar back in 2008, there weren't many options when it came to leveling. You pretty much just flowed with the questing hubs and sneaked in a Dungeon or two to finish off quests that took you there. It was slow and monotonous. If you enjoyed pvp, too bad. You couldn't gain XP so it would hinder your ability to level.

Today, we have so many options for leveling that you can level a large handful of your toons in completely different ways.
- Questing
- Dungeons (once past level 15)
- Grinding (not really doing quests but just killing mobs for experience. Think Asian MMOs /shiver)
- Gathering herbs and/or Mining (this is going to be extremely slow but HOLY CRAP Profitable)
- Player verse Player
- Holiday Quests

Now, I said Holiday Quests as being a little bit different than regular questing. You only have a specific amount of time to do them but these usually give excellent XP and really fun trinkets and things to collect.

So, with all of these different ways of leveling, how do you choose which way you want to level your new toon in Cataclysm? Do you just do what you've always done? Will you pick a completely different way?

Just lots of things to think about when December 7th rolls around :-)

<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

Tanking Mastery Podcast!

Hey gang!

I'm extremely excited to inform you that I will be a guest host tonight on a top notch Podcast specificially aimed at tanks. It is called, "Tanking Mastery"!

The host, Eldoric, first started doing, "The Guardian Tank" segments on the infamous podcast, "The Instance" for a while when he got a ton of positive feed back and created, "The Guardian Tank Podcast". This podcast is focused on Tanking 101 type stuff and Eldoric asks for people who are new to tanking to come on and be a listener host and ask questions. Really great stuff!

Since "The Guardian Tank Podcast" became so popular, he made a branch of the podcast to focus more on higher level tanking (perhaps a level 400 class?). "Tanking Mastery" is still a pretty new show (only two other shows have been published) but I'm extremely pumped to be a part of it!

Sadly, it is not a live show so you dear readers cannot come to mock my noobishness in a chat room ;-)

When it becomes available for download, I will let you know. I encourage you to give it and all of the Happy Nerd Media podcasts a listen especially those of you who are tanks, want to know more about tanking, or those of you who have no clue wtf your tanks are doing...

Wish me luck tonight!

<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

Protection Paladin: 4.0.1 Spec & Glyphs

Hey Gang!

So, the madness has finally arrived and once again Paladins have been thrown into a blender full of Hopes, Dreams and a dash of Fail. If you've been a paladin for more than just Wrath of the Lich King, what the Developers have done to us shouldn't surprise you in the least. Many of us logged on last night (8pm EST for us) when the servers came up to find all of our addons broken and the ground shaking (literally). I had huge notifications YOU ARE UNTALENTED! Well thanks Blizzard, let the whole world know that I suck... *mumbles* bastards *grumbles* jerkfaces....

Anyways...

I wanted to hit on a few major changes that Protection Paladins will experience for the first time logging into 4.0.1:WARNING: This is not at all an exhaustive list nor should everything that I put here be taken as "The Word" When I do some real raiding and get my grubby little hands on this stuff, I'll post about my findings.

• We get a new resource called Holy Power (or as many people will probably refer to it as Holy Powah! and then proceed to do a ninja kick in the air HI YA!) This is acquired by using various spells (Mainly Crusader Strike) and using them choosing which ways you want to spend these Holy Powahs! You can have a total of Three at one time. From my poking around last night, it seems that if you want threat, you use it on your Shield of The Righteous. I'm in mostly ICC 10-man gear with Tier 10 stuffs and when I was getting three stacks of Holy Power, my Shield of the Righteous was hitting for around 9k. T'was yummy :-) You can also spend it on more survivability using Word of Glory which is a 0 mana costing heal that its potency scales with the stacks of Holy Power. Overall, it should add quite a bit of spice to our once extremely predictable rotation. R.I.P. 969 LONG LIVE 939?
• Holy Shield is no longer part of our rotation. It is now a passive ability that procs off of our other abilities. It also has sluffed off the 8 charges that it used to for a straight % to block for the time that it's up. I'm going to guess it's unlimited blocking for that period of time?
• Consecrate is an extremely mana expensive spell that we can't just use frivolously anymore. The cooldown is longer than it's on the ground so this means, that if you want to use it, use it wisely.
• Avenger's Shield is now a High TPS ability. It still silences targets & still looks like Capt. America. The neat thing about this is that you can proc a free one every so often within your rotation. I believe that it's a chance off of a Talent Called Grand Crusader. Blizzard implemented a "Power Aura" like feature into the game. When you get your Avenger Shield Proc, it lights up like Christmas and Santa is yelling at you to MASH YOUR KEYS NAO! Best way to describe it is James Woods from Family Guy, "Oh! Piece of Candy! Oh, Piece of Candy! Oh! Piece of Candy!" I love it! Prot Pallies have never been a spec that worked around Procs. Really awesome stuff :-) I just hope that procs are for fun and are treated as a bonus not as a certainty or a requirement to live/ keep aggro on the Boss.  
• Forbearance... I'm not even going to talk about this right now... It gives me a head ache. Something to think about though: some things that used to give Forbearance don't give it anymore, others are well... yeah. I'll make a post about this when I get all of the facts. *eyes twitch*
• Sanctuary is now a Talent that gets us Crit Immune since we no longer have Defense as a Stat. Similar to Bear Druids. NO MORE DEFENSE! *Confetti*

There is so much to talk about but I really want to get into my spec that I chose for the moment.  I'm still working on the Lich King with my guild so I needed a practical spec for raiding. This is what I've come up with. I created this from wowtal.com.  PS: The "Use it ingame!" feature is pretty snazzy. I believe that it does a /run command and throws it at your toon's talent tree like a pie with out the whole messiness... and pie part. Damn it! I want Pie now!



This spec offers every TPS/DPS increase that I could get for level 80 plus some really nice survivability. A few key things about it: I've always felt that Divinity was pretty expensive (talent wise) for the lack of usefulness that you get out of it for Protection Paladins. Yeah, more healing on you is nice I guess but 3 Talents for 5%? Lame-o in my opinion. I'm going to see how often the Holy Power Proc off the other one works. If it seems to be pretty unnoticeable, I might switch my points over to Divinity but I wont be happy about it  /angry face. Other than Hammer of Justice (which, the more I'm thinking about it, I might go back and spec into it so that I can take care of the Val'kyr's), I took the remaining Talents in Prot. They all seem extremely useful and I'm extremely excited about that. What I'm really liking about our tree is that it actually does offer some bits of flavor. You can invest one talent point here to dig deeper there sorta thing.  
The Glyphs I chose are specifically for the LichVal'kyr duty after the Lich King is safely dropped off at the pool (aka our Druid picks his ass up). I need to Daze them giving our DPS more time to burn them down. Hammer & Shield of the Righteous are mainly just straight 10% Damage increase so why not. Seal of Truth is for our Expertise Cap. I've also found that as long as you're under the Hard Expertise cap (52 Expertise I believe), this is actually a pretty decent threat increase. The Minor Glyphs are pretty much SAVE 50% on your favorite Spells! Redeem this coupon every time you cast them. See your Local Paladin Trainer for Details. Other rules my apply. Prices on glyphs my vary from server to server. If you are unhappy with the minor glyph options, that sucks because you can't get anything else...

In conclusion, everything that I've just told you is subject to change at any time and as I'm writing this right now, I'm finding stuff that I didn't know before. I will continue to do research and find the most optimal spec for me and what I'm currently working on. Once we get the LK down, I'll be switching my gears towards a leveling spec and 5-mans. If you have comments, suggestions, flames, or anything that's on your mind about Prot Pallies, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! ALL CAPS CAUSE I'M FOR SERIOUS! I love to know what you have experienced thus far in game, Beta, or PTR. All of it! My brain feeds off of this stuff! You don't want my brain to shrivel & die do you? *Focuses pure guilt into your hearts!*

For further information and much more in-depth Theorycrafting, please head over to my favorite resource site: Maintankadin. This link is the one that the main theorycrafter, Theck, is creating just for 4.0 purposes. It's ultra mega nerdy and it's just the way I like it! &lt;3 Theck!

&lt;3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

PTR 4.0 Paladin levels 1-10

Hey Gang!
So, on Sunday Morning, I saw that the PTR was up for 4.0. I figured since I wasn't in the beta, this would give me a great opportunity to dig into some of the Protection Paladin changes that are soon to come.   I attempted to copy over Fuubaar but the wait time was 4 days o.0 I highly doubt that it will be quite that long but I knew that it wasn't going to be anytime soon. The only other option I had was to create a level 1 Female Human Paladin and off I went.

First thing that I noticed was the new resource bar underneath our mana bar. From the default UI, it looks like the bar is hanging under it by chains. Overall, I think it looks nice and isn't an eye sour which is good. The starting area is really informative to a new player. There are many windows that pop up letting you know what's going on and how to do some of the very basic things in game such as "This is a quest giver, he wants you to become his bitch. In exchange, he'll give you some useless gear & possibly give you another mindless task to go & kill the exact same thing again for another item." *Cough* I really enjoyed this feature when Aion first came out. I believe Blizzard took a few of these ideas & ran with it. Two thumbs up! :-)

Fresh Paladins start off with your basic white shirt, pants, and a two handed mace. You get one spell right off the bat & that is Crusader Strike. Crusader Strike is going to be a large part of your rotation and I'm going to guess that it will stay there even up to 85. The reason why Crusader Strike is so important is because it builds up your new Paladin Resource Holy Power. You only get three stacks of it so it doesn't seem to be too terribly hard to keep track of. It's also a pretty short cooldown so you will be able to use it on low level mobs 1-2 times before they die. At level 3 you get Seal of Righteousness & your Judgement. Now remember, all of our Judgements are rolled into one now. We no longer get three (mana, health, slow) so at this level, it just does damage to your foe. So from level 3-7, you have your Seal of Righteousness, judge when off cooldown, and Crusader Strike until dead. At level 5, you get Devotion Aura which gives you quite a bit of Armor (53 or something around there) for such a low level. Trade chat was discussing how the lower level gear actually has quite a bit of armor on it from what we remember. So the scaling is going to be quite a bit different from what we are used to in regards to health & survivability.

At level 8, you get your Hammer of Justice stun. Which is SO handy at this level. If you get linked adds, you can now learn to control them a lot better and are rewarded for it too. I'm glad that they kept this ability at such a low level.

Now, before level 9, your Holy Power is pretty worthless other than colors under your name. It's Disco Paladin. It's like all of Azeroth is Celebrating for me when I blow my enemies into tiny bits. LOOK AT THE BONES!

anyways....

This level was HUGE for my little paladin girl. Since she had no way to heal herself, she would die quickly if a pull went aerie. Word Of Glory is an extremely overpowered ability that converts your Holy Power into a manaless Heal.

A few notes:
1) There is no cooldown for it. So once you have at least 1 Holy Power, you can use it. It only takes 1 Crusader Strike to gain more Holy Power so the only thing that is holding you back from having a constant heal at this level is the Cooldown on Crusader Strike.
2) Healing Power of it. I didn't need all three stacks of Holy Power to heal myself to full. 1-2 should do it. It takes no time to get a Crusader Strike in and gain Holy Power to heal yourself up to full again. I hear the QQ seeping out of woodworks because of this already.

For those two reasons, this makes low level paladins completely unstoppable. I soloed Hogger at level 10 easily with this ability. I could also take on multiple mobs at once with out much fuss. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to have this spell be this useful for all levels of Paladins, but I fear that it will become but a shell of what it is now & I'm not getting my hopes up. For right now though... it's sexy :-) Once I hit 10, I threw my talent point into the Prot Tree and already got Avengers Shield & a mana regen pro (Passive) I believe that comes from Judgements.

This is my look at Low Level Paladins this far. Overall, I'm nervous and excited for old & new paladins to explore all of the large changes instore for our class.

<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

Fuubaar's UI

Hey Gang!
I've been meaning to make a UI post for a while now. Funny enough, it's so late that most of us aren't even fussing with our UIs because Cataclysm is going to do to our UIs as Deathwing did to the Barrens.

This screen shot of my UI was taken pretty early on in our Ice Crown raid. This might actually have been the first time that we saw Gunship. So perhaps May? Meh, what ever. My UI hasn't changed much at all other than the guild tag in the top left hand corner and the gold amount in the top right :-)

Without Further ado:

I figured if you didn't care about the UI, at least you can stare at a dancing rocket bear.

The first thing that you will notice is that there are things EVERYWHERE! But overall, the center is free of junk and unneeded clutter. Now, Deadly Boss Mods does pop up crucial notifications over the top of Fuubaar's head.

Major Addons:
- Pallypower~ THE most important addon for every paladin! Even if you don't raid, this is still highly suggested. It allows for you (the paladin) or a Raid leader who isn't a paladin to assign Paladin Blessings for each class in a very easy to use grid. You can see it along the right hand side. Your assigned Aura is on the top, if your Righteous Fury is on, what time the next buff will expire (also if you click on it, it will rebuff that lowest time left person which in this case is our Priest with only 2 minutes and 31 seconds remaining), and each class and when their buff will expire. There are SO many other neat things that this baby can do. Again, I highly suggest this addon for all paladins and raid leaders.
- Grid~ A Raid UI replacement located on the bottom left hand side
- Tao UI~ A Total UI organizer. Can download different skin types with both girlie and masculine types.
- Fuubaars *cough* I mean Fubars~ Great organizer of all the Fu- Addons (Gold-Fu, Guild-Fu, Location-Fu, etc) Plus, it's named after me :-) (not really but I named Fuubaar before I knew what a Fubar addon was) Can be found all the way to the top
- Sexy Map~ Map replacement with more Sexy. Tao UI's work really nicely with this addon and blend seamlessly. Mainly gives you more customization for your Map.
- ElkBuffBars~ It creates a nice list of all buffs that are currently on your Toon at the time and Timers for each. Great for raids when you have MANY BUFFS! ElkBuffBars HANDLES IT! :-)
- Bartender4~ A perfect and easy to use Bar replacement. It allows for you to customize the size, location, transparency, and number of buttons that the row has. I highly recommend this to someone looking for a bar replacement but has a hard time understanding how to customize & use addons. My bars are scattered everywhere for different purposes.
- Deadly Boss Mods~ I have the timers up on the middle right hand side and boss abilities that are on me chime on top of my toon.
- Omen~ For keeping an eye on Threat from those pesky DPS who wants to steal the precious from us. THEY NO CAN HAZ PRECIOUS! (that was my lolcat rendition of Gollum and The 1 Ring)
- Recount~ Damage Meter that actually shows a bit more than just damage but what ever. I rarely use this on my tank because who gives two Kudos what my DPS or Damage Done is. Even IF you are topping the DPS charts in the Lich King fight ;-)
- Button Timers~ This places a large number over top of you button letting you know when it will be up again. Pretty self explanatory.

Other addons that I find hard to live without that are not found on my UI are:
- Auctioneer~ An Auction House assistant to make your gold making life much easier. It adds a lot of customization for searching and viewing all things Auction House.
- Postal~ Auto-Opens everything in your Mailbox and throws it into your bag be it items from the Auction House, Items from other locations (other alts or friends mailing you huge piles of mats for 10 days worth of raiding flasks), or Gold from successful actions or Friends just sending you gold because they love you dearly ;-) Saves TONS of time.
- Overachiever~ Great addon for those of you who love achievements. For example the: "All the Creatures that I've ever loved", Achievement where you have to /love critters all over the world. If you happen to hover your mouse over top of a critter, it will tell you if you've loved it or if you need to love it. Does this for multiple achievements.
- Chatter~ This addon alerts you when someone says your name. It pops up on your screen with the sentence that contained your name. Great for people who have blazing guild chats or just have far too many friends to be able to track who wants to contact you.

So that's pretty much it as far as addons go. If you have any questions or suggestions to help me improve my UI, PLEASE comment on this post because I would love to hear 'em!

<3 Your Friendly Neighboorhood Fuubaar

*Spoilers* Paladin Cataclysm Stuffs: FINALLY!

Hey Gang!


We normally don't talk about new changes in the game that have yet to be implemented on this blog, but it's been a long time since any big information has come out for Paladins for Cataclysm. If you are someone who doesn't want to know or read about Cataclysm, you probably can just skip this post. All of the information that I am going to talk about can be found at http://www.mmo-champion.com/ and I will be adding my thoughts (like you give two Felpoops about what I actually think anyways).

I will be focusing on the Protection Paladin stuff with a hint of Retribution. Again, if you do not want to be Spoiled, please GTFO (with Love) :-D

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Holy

• Healing Hands now has a 1 min cooldown.
• Divine Plea is now trained at level 58. Down from 68. That's pretty good since they seem to be nerfing Mana Regen and other ways of getting mana back. Maybe beef it up a bit?
• Light's Beacon now affects each heal you cast on the target instead of just Holy Light and Holy Shock. Now heals the beacon for 50%. (Down from 100%)
• Holy Wrath no longer scales from attack power and deals 2400 Holy damage divided among all targets within 10 yards. 2400 Damage spread among friends isn't very much. I'm going to guess that this is a place holder for a MUCH larger number. *crosses fingers*
• Holy Shock now grants a charge of Holy Power. Ok, so this is how Healadins get their Holy Power stacks... I'm guessing that they really want Holy Paladins to have this be a big part of their tool box. Cool for them I guess.
• Seal of Wisdom is gone. This is extremely interesting that they are taking this Seal out. It has been my grinding Seal for a long time now. I also use it in heroics where I'm chain pulling and need mana. I wonder where they will be putting our mana regeneration.
• Seal of the Pure now seems to have a chance to restore the Paladin's mana. <---- Oh here it is :)
  
• Holy Light is now trained at level 14. Up from 5.
• Divine Light - A large heal that heals a friendly target for 7761.99 to 8648.14. Good for periods of heavy damage. / 30% of base mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast Cool that Paladins get a new EVEN larger heal.
• Divine Favor now increases your chance to critically hit with your next Word of Glory, Holy Shock, Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light by 100%. / Instant, 1 min cooldown
• Denounce - You have a 50/100% chance when any of your Holy spells get a critical effect to make your next Exorcism spell instant and cost no mana. Similar to Ret's now.
• Sacred Cleansing is now a Tier 4 Talent. Down from Tier 5. In the back of my mind, I'm still really hoping that they don't get rid of Cleansing for all of the Paladin specs. It's really become second nature for me to cleanse myself & others not only during solo play, but raiding. If they do, I'll probably have to end up having some sort of hybrid Holy/Prot Off-spec that can cleanse so that I can go back to soloing everything.
• Infusion of Light is now a Tier 3 Talent. Down from Tier 4. It now only affects Holy Light. (No longer affects Divine Light)
• Blessed Life is now a Tier 6 Talent. Up from Tier 4.
• Enlightened Judgments is now a Tier 3 Talent. Down from Tier 4.
• Healing Light now affects Words of Glory.
• Tower of Radiance (NYI) *New* - Directly healing the target of your Beacon of Light has a % chance to generate Holy Power.
• Judgments of the Pure is now a Tier 1 talent. Down from Tier 2.
• Sanctified Light now affects Word of Glory and increases critical chance by 6/12%. (Up from 5/10%)
• Speed of Light *New* - Casting Holy Shock grants 5/10/30% spell haste for your next Flash of Light, Holy Light or Divine Light, and casting Healing Hands grants you 10/20/60% movement speed for 10 sec. Also lowers the cooldown on Healing Hands by 10/20/30 sec at all times.
• Clarity of Purpose *New* - Reduces the casting time of your Holy Light and Divine Light spells by 0.1/0.2/0.3 sec.

Protection

• Shield of Righteousness is now trained at level 44. Down from 74. This is a wonderful change in my opinion. This is THEE best Single target threat generation tool for a paladin. The earlier the better I say.
• Sacred Duty now only Reduces the cooldown of Divine Protection by 1/2/3 min.
• Improved Crusader Strike has been replaced with Grand Crusader - When your Shield of Righteousness and Hammer of Righteousness deal damage, they have a 20% chance of refreshing the cooldown on your next Crusader Strike and causing it to hit for 50/100% additional damage. Ok, this is the big whopper right here. Not only do they want us to introduce Crusader Strike into our rotation, but they are also making us leen towards a F.C.F.S. (First come first serve that means more or less a priority list) rotation rather than a 969. This would be a HUGE change up for old paladins. I really hope that they don't make it choppy but I'm going to guess that it will be at the beginning. I really enjoy the smoothness of a Protection Paladin rotation. If you get into a groove, it's beautiful. I can totally see myself staring at cooldowns and having to re-learn everything. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing though :)
• Ardent Defender is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5. This little guy makes me nervous. So many QQ about this ability. "It's too OP!" they say. Well stuff it you mongrels. Everyone has something unique about their class and mine just means that I have a Super Mario 1UP. Is that so bad for your tank to have the ability to bounce back after taking a huge smack to the face? It's win win baby :-) <3 Ardent Defender.
• Divine Guardian is now a single rank talent and has been revamped (but is probably NYI) - Party or raid members within 30 take 20% reduced damage for 6 sec. Now this is what this damn talent was meant to be used for. The whole shinanagains of "I'm going to eat raid wide damage WHILE tanking this Dragon" sounded like such a stupid idea to begin with. I liked the redirection of damage part but redirect it to something that we WANT to die... like the Dragon :-)
• Holy Shield has been revamped - Increases your chance to block by 30% for 10 sec, and deals 97.8 Holy damage for every attack blocked. Consumes Holy Power to extend duration by 10 sec per stack of Holy Power. / 10% of base mana, Instant cast, 1 min cooldown Ok, I'm still quite confused on the HOLY POWER and wtf it even is. It sounds like you get a stack of it for doing a spell and can allocate these stacks to do different things. Being able to extend spell lengths or the potentcy just sounds Ultra Mega Sexy & will most definately add a level of complexity. Complex Paladin is a total oxymoron. Te-hee
• Hallowed Ground is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 4. If I remember correctly, this was the one that brought down the cooldown for Consecration by such & such amount of time. Or Maybe it was threat/ DPS increase. Anyways, they are mixing it up with the Paladin's entire rotation. Quite excited & scared....
• Vindication is now a Tier 5 talent. Up from Tier 4.
• Shield of the Templar is now a Tier 6 talent and has been revamped - Increases the critical strike chance of your Shield of Righteousness by 5/10%. In addition, your Shield of Righteousness critical strikes have a 50/100% chance of making your next Judgement a critical strike. LOLWUT?! I wonder where they got this idea from. Adding crit for tanks is a really odd direction to go. Crit's cool I guess o.0
• Spiritual Attunement is gone. More mana regen gone bye bye. What they should just come out & say is: We don't want you to regen mana anymore. You get one bar of this blue shit, make it happ'n Capt'n.
• Divine Sacrifice is gone. Previously Cheered... kthx
• Improved Exorcism is now Wrath of the Faithful - Increases the damage by 10/20% and critical strike chance by 10/20% of your Holy Wrath spell. I'm a total fan of this spell. If they do bump up the useability of this sexy AoE, they better have some more undead areas for me to wreck havoc on Skellies. An entire circle of undead skeletons always makes for a pretty screen shot :-)
• Improved Devotion Aura is now Protector of the Innocent - Your Auras reduce your damage taken by 1/2/3% and the amount healed on any target by 2/4/6%. So it just got a fancy name but does the same. whoopie....
• Sanctuary Reduces the chance you'll be critically hit by melee attacks by 2/4/6% instead of reducing damage taken from all sources. Well Poo. Not all incoming damage is Physical & Magical Damage is mighty painful. I guess Stamina will still be king when it comes to Fighting Fire (or Arcane, Shadow, Frost, Holy, or Nature)
• Sacred Oath is gone.
• Reckoning now gives you a 10/20/30% chance after blocking an attack for your next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec to generate an additional attack. Huh? So if a mob hits me & I block it, I have a % chance to hit him back within 4 swings for an ADDITIONAL Swing? This totally sounds like if all of the moons align and I'm facing Northwest with a light breeze in my face that I'll generate another swing.

Retribution

• *Divine Storm - An instant weapon attack that causes 20% of weapon damage to up to all enemies within 8 yards. The Divine Storm heals up to 3 party or raid members totaling 25% of the damage caused. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:
• 1 Holy Power: 22% Weapon Damage
• 2 Holy Power: 50% Weapon Damage 
• 3 Holy Power: 90% Weapon Damage / 20% of base mana, Instant cast
• *Crusader Strike now grants a charge of Holy Power. AH HA! This is what I was looking for. A way to generate these HOLY POWER OF FACEMELTING Magnitute psudo combo points! *cough* So now I can see where this is coming from. So you rack these stacks of Holy Power up by using your Crusader Strike and then expending them on abilities to make them more powerful the more stacks you have. So like a mix of a Rogue/ Druid Cat with Mana? Sure....
• Inquisition *New* - Consumes Holy Power to increase your Holy Damage by 30%. Lasts 10 sec per charge of Holy Power consumed. / 20% of base mana, Instant cast
• Conviction is now a Tier 2 talent. Down from Tier 6.
• Sanctity of Battle is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 6. Now reduces cooldown of Exorcism by 3/6 secs. (Up from 2/4 secs)
• Swift Retribution is now a single rank talent increasing melee and ranged attack speed by 20%.
• Fanaticism (Tier 4) is now Improved Judgment (Tier 2) - Increases the damage of your Judgment spell by 15% and decreases its cooldown by 3 sec.
• Judgments of the Wise now grants you 40% of your base mana over 10 sec. (Old - immediately grants you 25% of your base mana) WoW, this is the first mana regeneration spell that I've seen. Sounds extremely powerful too. I'll call it a MoT (Mana over time) Clever... I know.
• The Art of War is now a Tier 4 talent, down from Tier 3. It now has a 15/30% chance to proc from any melee attack (Old - 100% proc from Critical) and no longer reduce the casting time of Holy Light.
• Seals of Retribution is now a Tier 4 talent. Up from Tier 3.
• Eye for an Eye is now a Tier 1 talent. Up from Tier 2. It now gives you a 5/10% chance to cause 30% of the damage taken back to the attacker. This is probably one of the talents I'll be getting once I put my 31 points into Prot. Sound's really neat for a tank to have this actually. I totally envison one of those bullies on the play ground that pins the weaker kid down & makes him punch himself. "Quit hitting yourself!"  Maybe that's just me :-)

• Righteous Vengeance is now a Tier 6 talent. up from Tier 2.
• Improved Judgments is now Improved Crusader Strike - Increases the damage of your Crusader Strike by 15/30% and decreases its cooldown by 1.5/3 sec.
• Heart of the Crusader is now a Tier 3 (Up from Tier 1) single-rank (Down from 3 ranks) talent.

 All and all, I'm pretty excited about the reduced size & bloat reduction of the talent trees. Still waiting on my Beta invite because I SO want to test out these new abilities and see what type of rotation the New and "Improved" Protection Paladin is looking like.

Also, where is my Pally Pet?!

I can haz!!!!!

<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

Cata Paladin Changes: We get a PET! Well... sorta.

Hey Gang!


I wanted to discuss some of these SEXY changes for Paladins that was spewed out over at MMO-Champion. The Blue text is OBVIOUSLY the Blues posts & the orange is my commentary. Again, everything that I say is speculation and pulling ideas out of my bum but who doesn't want to read what I have to say right? ;)


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.
Sounds similar to Holy Wrath on Undead but your friends have to be paying attention to you when you do it or it loses its effect. Also, minus the AoE Stun. Does the Eadric the Pure's ability have a disorienting/ stun ability? What I'm curious about is Can I get the crit part that's in the holy tree? That just sounds like a yummy AoE threat generator to me.

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. Hmmm. So much touching. What's with the touching? Really? No one will want to shake my hands because they've been all over my raiders & Uther only knows where they've been ;) On a serious note, if this can be cast by any paladin, it could be pretty neat. Since melee are all up in my business, it would be pretty useful for me to cast it if the fight has a lot of AoE damage. But I judge Light, would it stack? So many questions. Pretty cool though.

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). /Drools all over herself. This was honestly the last thing that I thought we (the paladin class) would ever get. A PET! Well it's not like a hunter pet or anything but this actually made me *squee* a bit when I read about it. This TOTALLY reminds me of a Final Fantasy Guardian Spirit. I'm really hoping that this makes it in. PS: I found this pic below. I'm not sure where it's from but I Google Searched for Paladin & this came up. That would be a SWEET pet. I believe that the guys would enjoy it a bit. I wish that they would make some girl eye candy for a pet. Paladin Man Pet..... mmmmmmm

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. Well, making leveling a Paladin a bit less suck is ok in my book. I'm interested in seeing what they give Ret as a bone since they are taking away their "Go To" Spell.

•Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons. Kinda sucks for Ret & Prot in pvp but I feel like sometimes if I have a run in with a few casters, I'm so DoTed up anyways I can't do much more than Spam my Cleanse button and Flee. There were a few cases where I used my clease to help the healers out a bit (Heigan & Rotface come to mind) I guess they wont be getting our help anymore :( Sorry healers but you'll have to cleanse my Green sick now.

•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. Paladin's Rejoice! My Pallypower responsibilities are slowly faiding away into nothingness. /dance

•Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins. So you're telling me that I could potentally Holy Shock Pull? Sweet!


New Talents and Talent Changes


•We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem. As long as I can hearth out in the time that Divine Shield lasts, I'm ok with it ;) Blizzard, if you ruin Bubble Hearth, I'll cry. For the rest of this comment though, I'm quite confused about the statement "We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back." Holding them back from what exactly? Death? Well Duh! No but seriously think about that statement for just a moment, what was Blizzard holding back from Retribution Paladins because of Defensive Cooldowns? This is the ultimate question. I guess we'll be finding out in Cata.

•We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive. I know very little about Ret and even less about Ret PvP so I really can't make any useful or insightful statements about this topic.

•We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer. Making Paladin healers happy makes me happy :)

•We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much. >.> are we seeing a trend here? Holy Paladin's are getting a MAJOR revamp. Spreading their niche a bit wider from only being tank healers to being able to assist with raid healing a bit. I've never played Holy but I can only imagine the frustration.

•Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat. Like everyone else.

•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. Well, I sort of use a different rotation with AoE verse single target. It becomes more of a FCFS (First come, First Serve for those of you not into the Lingo) instead of the 696 rotation. I favor Avenger's Shield, Consecrate, Holy Wrath (when it's a big ol' pile of undead), Hammer of the Righteous, while not relying on Shield of the Righteous nearly as much with AoE packs. If it's a lot of little mobs (Onyxia whelps) I'll even switch to Retribution Aura to help out with Threat from all angles. Single target mobs & bosses I go balls to the walls 696 for the best treat possible. I mean, if they want to give me more AoE only options, I'm fine with that but I believe we have enough as it stands right now. It's not just Consecrate like everyone believes.

•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. I SO called this. I knew when they spoke about the Block changes that this would get revamped as well. They mentioned that they are going to make it so that Block mitigates 30% of the incoming damage (ridding ourselves of Block Value) but lessen Block Rating (aka the amount of times one Blocks an incoming attack) So taking the 8 Charges that Holy Shield previously had allows for them to tweak this spell as to how often Paladins will block by just saying "improve block chances". It will no longer be 100% chance anymore but an "improved chance" What ever the hell that means.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses


Holy


•Healing
•Meditation
•Critical Healing Effect


Meditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.


Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more. Again, I know that I don't understand anything about Holy Paladins but doesn't that last line make you giggle? "When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more" Well DUH! Doesn't that really define what a Crit is? I know I know, it actually means that if they Crit a heal, it will heal for the critical amount and then some. Blah Blah Blah. Still though, it sounds goofy.

Protection


•Damage Reduction
•Vengeance
•Block Amount


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


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. Ok, let me paint you a picture of what I see when I read this whole Vengeance thing:


Two Kids are on the playground. Kid (A) runs up to kid (B) and slightly punches the kid (B) in the arm. Kid (B) turns around and hits kid (A) a bit harder. Kid (A) gets upset because Kid (B) hit him, so Kid (A) hits Kid (B) Even harder than before. This escalates into both children beating the crap out of eachother and crying.

Lucky for us though, Mobs don't hit harder the harder you hit them. So this throws this analogy right out the window of the Gunship. What I do see though is that the higher up in raiding you are, the mobs hit you harder. Thus, scaling the tanks AP back onto the mob/ Boss. The harder he hits, the higher your threat. This solves the threat problem that many are seeing at high end raiding. Very neat solution to the problem.

Retribution


•Melee Damage
•Melee Critical Damage
•Holy Damage

Holy Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased. More Damage... yay.

::::: Confetti:::::

So there you have it Folks. Finally our changes have been anounced. Overall, I'm pretty excited about the direction they are taking Protection Paladins. I've always had a facination for Block as a tank and Blizzard has now just set my passion into stone.

<3 Fuu

Just Do Your Job: Fulguralis' Thoughts with some Fuubaar Flare

It's official: we've hit a wall.  Rotface has stymied us for the time being.  Sometimes in the course of raiding, you hit that wall where you just don't feel like you're "getting it".  I'm not talking about when you feel like you're making headway.  I'm talking about when you feel like you're taking steps backwards.  It happens even to the best raid groups and usually it's a direct function of frustration.

The above is actually the beginning of Fulguralis' thoughts before he emailed me.

"I have meetings sweety... finish my thoughts"

Continuing on from what he was trying to express was that yes, we've officially hit what is known as the proverbial wall in our raiding. What sucks is ... I'm the one kiting & I'm the one dying. I know how to kite properly, I know how to deal with Adds you aren’t suppose to touch. I also know that it's not just me who is at fault here regarding this Rotface matter.

This post is not at ALL about pointing fingers.

"It's the healers fault for not cleansing and keeping the raid topped off!"

"It's the Kiting tanks fault for failing to run the path of a Kidney Shape!"

"It's the DPSs fault for not merging the slimes together!"

"It's the Main Tanks Fault for looking so awesome while standing there in the middle!"

You see? Everyone's at fault if you look at it that way. Last night, we spanked Festergut with his own fart spores, walked down the hallway and watched our dreams of downing Rotface pass us by in the breeze...a smelly gaseous breeze. My kiting was horrible because I was paying attention to WAY too many things at once.

-Watch for Pipes bursting

-Watch for puddles on the floor

-Watch for where the infected person is

-See who the next infected person is and help cleanse if need be

-Keep Aggro on the Big slime

-Make sure the Slimes are Merging

-Make sure the big slime doesn't touch me

-Live

See there's nothing that I have to worry about during my kiting.... NOT!

Fulguralis and I discussed each time why I was dying and how could we stop that from happening again. Trouble shooting isn't the problem here. I just felt like I wasn't getting it long enough for me to actually get into a rhythm for the kiting. What we were realizing was that I was trying to do too much at once. Everyone was! Why? Why were we trying to make this fight so much harder than it really has to be?

"Do your job!"

Don't pay attention to what the healers are doing if you are a DPS... DPS!*

Don't pay attention to what the tank is doing if you are the Healer.... HEAL!*

Don't pay attention to what the stupid DPS are doing if you are the Tank... TANK THE DAMN THING!*

No matter how hard you stare at those bars as a DPS you aren't going to help the healers keep people up. I'm thinking that if I were to cut my To Do list of crap on that fight down, it would be much easier to execute what I actually need to do. So here's what I'm thinking that I need to do as a tank kiting those Slimes on Rotface:

- Wait until two people have the infection, and their slimes create one big Ooze

- Taunt the Ooze

- Watch out of Puddles on the floor

-Watch out for Burst pipes

- Keep aggro on Ooze

- Live

What changed is the person infected has now picked up the job of watching the Slimes merge not me. I'm not going to watch for the person who is infected anymore because wtf does that do? I could cleanse them but that is either the healer's job or the Cleansing totems. My job is to keep aggro on the big Ooze and make sure that it doesn't touch me.

It has now become Fuubaar Verse Ooze! Not Fuubaar verse observing everything going on in the raid plus Ooze.

That's not a fair fight.

Now I tell you this because I believe anyone who's ever raided before feels responsible for what happens. I'm not sure if it's purely a Tank or a healer feeling but when I tank a raid, I feel like if something messes up, it's my ass.

What a selfish way to look at it really. What about the 9 other people, is it not their responsibility to feel like that too? I have to have faith that my healers will do their best to keep me and the rest of the raid alive. I have to have faith that my DPS will pour their little hearts out to kill this thing.

It takes all of us to become victorious at the end, not just the tanks, not just the healers, not just the DPS.

Everyone!

Have faith in your fellow raiders that they will do their job so you can solely focus on doing yours.
<3 Fuu

PS: I hope this is where you were going with this honey ;)
PPS: So, I know you are waiting for the reason for the crazy Disco fella that has absoluely nothing to do with this post. Well, Google Image search strikes again. I searched for the word "Ooze" and I found this gentlemen. The caption was "This man Oozes Sex" and I about died laughing. So there you have it folks :)

* Unless you are told otherwise from your raid leader. The Bold and simplistic aspect of my statement is just that. It does not mean that if your raid leader tells you to stop DPSing and do something else to not listen to them. Please listen to your raid leader and take my bold statements to heart. Dear Lord, if I start receiving emails from your Raid leaders stating that you weren't listening to them and said that you were only suppose to DPS and nothing else. I reserve the right to tell you to stop being a mindless Zombie.