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

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

Important Public Service Anouncement!

I
would like to talk to you today about something that is very serious and hits home for a lot of tanks. It has been something that all tanking classes deal with and not just in the recent 4.0.3 patch. Rumors of it date back to early Alpha testing in Vanilla and it is no laughing matter.

I would like to talk to you about Helmet Hair.

This pandemic has affected everyone in some way or another. After an epic battle with a mighty internet dragon, you walk out of the blazing inferno when your Raid Leader shouts “Screen Shot time!” You proudly saunter over with beads of sweat racing down your face and glory pulsing through your veins. You stand next to that cute warlock and remove your helmet only to find that it’s matted to your face and completely disheveled. The warlock glares at you and starts rolling on the floor laughing. “Hey everyone! Check out Helmet Hair over here!” The moment those words escape his very mouth, you notice that nine sets of beady eyes are fixated on you.

Helmet Hair is a serious condition and should not be taken lightly. Talk to your local barber shop and ask for Goblin Helmet Hair Away Shampoo.

Side Effects may include: Itching, Burning, spontaneous explosions, hair loss, weight gain, and your plate armor to deteriorate rapidly during combat.

If you suffer from Helmet Hair, you don’t have to wait any longer. Get your Goblin Helmet Hair Away Shampoo Today!

DK Specs, Fuu's Debut, and 310% Flying Cheap(er)!

The above represents perhaps the most auspicious title I've ever had around here.  I mean, usually I stick with one topic, or go with some form or "Randomness is Random" title.  Here I have three distinct, and pretty much unrelated, writing points.  Could be crazy.  You've been forewarned.

Why am I rambling about the title?  Well, as you may have surmised, the title is generally what draws people in.  Also, it makes for easy search and find via a service like Google.  That's why for information that I want to get out to more than just the regulars, I tend to have a more mundane heading.  People search for things like "4.0.1 class spec", and not "Ful's Cavalcade of Hilarious and Insightful Talent Spending."  Not that I'm in any sort of position to give other burgeoning bloggers advice... it's just something to keep in mind as we go into Cataclysm and are looking to get helpful information in the hands of the people looking for it.

With that said, no one is likely to search for "Fuu's Podcast Debut", so what's that doing in there?  Well, she mentioned it earlier in the week, and it's now up!  For you tanky types out there, I'm sure it's worth a listen.  I haven't even gotten to hear it yet, so I'll be perusing it with the rest of you when I get a chance to hit up the link.  There is a link right?  Yes, I'm sure and I'll pop it in here as soon as someone can get it to me at work (I'm, of course, blocked), or we find it at home tonight.

edit:  There were a few issues with the podcast being available on iTunes. It finally showed up. Here is the link to his website at The Guardian Tank. I believe that it starts working with your main media player (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, etc.) If you would like to download it directly to your iTunes or Zune, you can search for the Program; The Guardian Tank. The Episode is called: Tanking Mastery 3 (Master Tank: Fuubaar). Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, issues finding/ downloading. <3 Fuu

Fuu is the podcast queen.  If there is a podcast, she's probably listened to it.  I, on the other hand, am terrible about listening to podcasts.  It's probably why I've never been invited to one. I've tried, I really have, but I'm just a reader through and through.  I love talking to others, but just listening is like torture to me.  I want to interact!  Moral of the story: direct all podcast questions to Fuu.  I'm just the odd scribe she lets out of the dark cupboard under the stairs every now and then.

If you're here for the prospect of 310% flying at a discounted rate, I have great news.  Commenter "Ben" tipped us off last week that you could potentially get the required training for a much more modest 4k gold at Valiance Keep (for Alliance, Horde I believe is in Warsong Hold or something).  Of course, the discount comes from having an exalted reputation with the folks out there.  I know it's one of the Wrath groups, not sure which one though.  I earned exalted with all of them through the Argent Tournament a while ago.  In any case, there is a trainer right next to the flight point in Valiance Keep that will give you the same training as the dude in Dalaran, only with a 1k discount if you're exalted.  Totally a deal, and got me my 310% perhaps two weeks earlier than I'd thought at the rate I'm going.  Big thanks to Ben for the great tip!  

Finally, if you're here for DK specs, I've been a bit busy with Warlocky stuff and haven't really gotten to spend much time with my alt-DK.  I have, however, worked out some preliminary specs.  I've only used the DPS one in game so far, running around doing some dailies.  I'm rather scared to try out my tanking now that I have to go to a whole new tree.  Plus, I still only have DW weapons and there really isn't a DW tanking option.  I suppose you still can (and I will until I lock down a solid 2H weapon), but it's not nearly as cool or "niche" as it once was.  In any case, I wanted to pass along the links for both of these specs for any interested parties.  I'm definitely looking for feedback and will be updating those guides in the upcoming weeks as well.  Warlockery comes first 'round here, but I don't plan to abandon my PvP toon and alternative tank.

Preliminary 4.0.1 Death Knight Tanking Spec Here.  Some notes:

• Talents were hard for me to pick here, seemed like there was a lot of good stuff.
• I focused on things that would give me survivability (not worried so much about threat right now).
• Blood Boil could be a great AoE spell for us (as opposed to relatively trivial before).
• Epidemic seems important to me to pick up.
• Since I specced for survival, I tried to glyph more for threat.  Seemed to work out best.

Preliminary 4.0.1 Death Knight Frost Dual Wielding DPS Spec Here.  Some notes:

• I've yet to really figure out a rotation, it seems like I'm constantly rune starved.
• I made this spec with PvP (BGs) in mind.  Thus, some of the talent choices reflect that.
• Glyphing seemed easier or this than the tank, just buff your DPS.
• Diseases seem to last a heck of a lot longer, plus we have that new strike that refreshes them.  I've not been able to fit it all together nicely yet, but haven't had a lot of time to spend with it either.  Advice appreciated.

I don't usually get to do nearly as much research for my DK as I do for my 'lock.  It's just the way things go.  Still, I wanted to post up my spec plans with the hope of getting feedback.  At the very least, I think they're good starting points.  Death Knights saw a huge amount of change with the 4.0.1 revamp, so it's going to take me a bit to get my mind around them all.  It just doesn't feel very smooth right now, but that could simply be due to lack of practice as well.  I hate feeling clunky, don't you?

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

*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

QotD: What Piece of Armor did you hold onto the Longest?

Hey Gang!

As you may or may not know, Blizzard just dropped a Cataclysmic Bomb (yeah... I had to) on us yesterday. We are still waiting on the Closed Beta invites (I can haz invitez? kthx). Many of you are excited about the Ruby Sanctum and awaiting patiently to take over Gnomeregan or behead some crazy Troll King. I have yet to log on since our raid on Monday. Not only did we have the 24 hour maintenance, but I really didn't have much else to do in the game.

I could make more gold, I could level up one of my toons, I could take Fuu to the highest peak in Storm Peaks & jump off of it for pure enjoyment but nothing really excites me at the moment /sadface. I've got about 15k gold saved up and I already have 95% of the BoA gear purchased up for my new Worgen Mage. I'm pretty set for when the ball drops, so I'm not too concerned.

As I said before, I'm pretty much just logging in for raiding or the occasional Battleground with my lvl 63 huntard TamedFuu (yeah, crappiest name ever. She was my second toon that I ever created and I was an officer at the time. I felt that it was necessary for people to know who I was. I'll probably get her name changed if I get her to max level) Let me tell you, Battleground XP is sexy! Not only are you probably getting a 4th of a level every win, but you can save up and get really nice rewards with your honor. I even ran out & tamed a fluffy spider for a better BG experience. I have my Ghost Saber that I use for everything else but who can resist netting Horde into a web & making them your bitch while you gleefully prance around shooting them to death with a big grin on your face.

Anyways...

So, on Monday, we decided to reset our ICC 10-man ID and start over. Not only did we have a newbie come a long but Marrowgar the Bonestorm Queen was the weekly. Needless to say, it was hard to resist. We had an absolute blast in there with the new 25% buff. We could act like complete freakin idiots & the bosses would topple over like twigs in the breeze.

I didn't care too much because I'm there for the peeps not the purps.

Let me tell you about Fuubaar's Purp luck. She has ABSOLUTELY NO LUCK! I kid you not, if I couldn't buy gear with emblems that are a 100% drop, she would still be in blues & greens ><.  I've run every raid that has come out in WotLK multiple times and you know what? I'm one of those people who replaces the same items over & over because that's all I get. Monday night was a triumphant night for me. I finally replaced one of THEE hardest things to replace for a tank, their Shield. OMFG! I have been staring at my Wall of Terror from Naxx 25-man since ... well since when it was cool to run Naxx. I shit you not. I don't even know what do with myself now that I have FINALLY replaced that stupid thing with the Neverending Winter from the gunship battle. I've actually seen that shield drop once before but I let my co-tank have it because he was in WAY worse condition than I was. Now that's saying something about Shield Rarity.

Why does Blizzard allow for such key items to be so rare? I've seen that damn Skull Battalion thing drop off of Lady Deathwhisper every stinkin night. A shield for your tanks? Oh Hell no, we get jack shit for drops. It's totally bogus!

Rant incoming!

Tanks have it so horrible at the beginning of their tanking careers once they hit 80. It's unreal...

Once your fresh 80 decides to start collecting tanking gear (even if you've been doing it the entire time you were leveling through Northrend collecting tanking gear, it's still bad), you need to hit 535 Defense to be uncrittable for heroics and 540 Defense for Raids. This is a MUST to tank anything. Even if you are a point off, you get crit with such a low healthpool, down goes the tank. Now, does it say anywhere on ANYTHING for a new tank to magically know this number? Nope. They have to look it up or ask around. Today, I still see this question being asked in Trade chat. I very rarely ever see anyone asking about hit caps. That right there is why Blizzard is getting rid of it because they realize how stupid that is.

So you have your level 80 and you know what Defense cap you need to hit. How do you get there? Most try to scrounge up anything that has gobs of Defense on it (usually from the random quest rewards or making the Cobalt/Saronite Gear). What's the problem with Cobalt/Saronite Tanking gear? It has TONS of Defense but not much else. So what happens to the tank when they find an upgrade in their heroics? Well, it's going to be a really nice upgrade for them ... but wait... it drops them below the cap. Again, I know that DPS have a similar issue with Hit rating juggling. But really, are you completely unable to do your job without being capped? Your DPS might hinder a bit but you aren't completely lost. So that poor tank is unable to accept the huge upgrade until they can make up for it elsewhere. I still remember this part of gearing. It's completely disheartening and really deters new tanks from entering the LFD tool because they just can't gear up. Some people suggest that they should queue up as DPS and use their badges for tanking gear but I say why should it be that way? Why should someone be forced into a role that they don't enjoy just because it's inconvenient for someone else? Blizzard wants to encourage new tanks into the LFD tool but this is NOT the way to do it.

With the ultra mega gear inflation that occurred throughout the expansion, it has helped quite a bit for new tanks to quickly gear up from questing blues & greens into t-9 and t-10 stuff. The T-10 gear has SO much Defense on it that it's almost gross. Last time I checked on Fuu, she had 579 Defense. Like Whoa? Can I donate some of that excess fat to the newbies? Now being over the cap, isn't wasted like Hit is for DPS but it sure isn't as helpful as a pure stat like +Stamina or +Dodge.

Then comes the transition from each Patched Raid that came out in WotLK. In Naxx, it was get your grubby little hands on anything that is purple & is made for a tank. I think that the gear that dropped in here was really spread out and the stats were balanced. I remember really sticking with + Block gear because it was yummy :) When Ulduar came out, it felt choppy. I remember very few tanking drops at the beginning of the instance and it was hard to get any deeper for our raiders than Hodir. I did get the +Stam Iron Trinket from Ignis (which I'm still wearing) but I don't remember many other upgrades from there. Most of the problems were that it was a huge step up in difficulty & we didn't have much time to get very deep into it before ToC came around. Everyone quickly stopped raiding Ulduar to get the bigger & better stuff from ToC.

For all of the Raids Prior to this, it was stack as much Dodge as you could possibly muster. So, not only was the gear not dropping, but there was a specific mindset for a certain type of gear. So anything that did drop was built around that mentality of YOU MUST DODGE ALL! And you know what happened? The Chill of the Throne was a huge smack in the face for many of these Dodge stacking maniacs. For those few of us who attempted to balance our stats actually came out of top. It was hard for those tanks to rethink and re-do everything that they had worked hard for by re-gemming, re-enchanting, and rearranging their gear to match the new Hotness of Effective Health & Armor that ICC demanded.

RAWR!

Wow, sorry about that. I have no clue where that came from. Passionate tank is Passionate. Now I must make this clear, that rant was from my prospective only. This is not to say that every tank had horrible luck through each Raid. Or as bad as mine was. I'm ranting because it upsets me that a fellow raider & I wanted to tank with our ICC raiders but felt quite inadequate when we first arrived. We ended up doing more than fine and made up for the lack of gear with skill, which I am the most proud of :-).

Needless to say, Poor Fuubaar has been wearing a 221 lvl Shield & a 221 Necklace from 25-man Naxx for over a year now. She also wore her Alchemy Trinket well into ToC.

So, here's my question for you (if I didn't scare you off with my Holy $#!& rant):

What was the piece of gear that you held onto the longest throughout the expansion? Was it intentional or unintentional? If you had a piece of gear that you just kept for sentimental value, have you replaced it yet? What did it feel like? Tell me the Story :-D

<3 Your Friendly Neighborhood Fuubaar

(Guest Post) Tenuring the Professor

Got a treat today: a guest post!  I'll have to admit that the title is mine.  I'm not sure that "tenuring" really works for what we want to do, but I wanted to make a clever quip with him being the Professor and all.  Aside from a sure fire way to find a daytime nap, my Profs were often the source of constant frustration.  Whether it be the dirt napping or the frustration, this dude is no different.  I'll let the poster introduce himself and will only preface it to say that he is indeed the one who got me started in WoW.  Also, he's regularly been a great person for me to chat strat with (and plot items if you happen to be writing a novel or something, but that's another story... literally), so when he called me up to let me in on his Putricide thoughts and offered a guest post strat... well, I'm all ears.  So below is a faithful reproduction of what was sent to me.  I think both of us would love for any and all comments pointing out different options or opinions on what needs to be done for this fight... it can be quite complicated.  Without further ado...  - Ful

First off, let me say hi and introduce myself.  I’m Finwe.  I’m a friend of the Fu’s.  I’m pretty sure I was the one who got Ful started in the game.  Maybe I just think too highly of myself.  Anyway, I play a druid tank (mainspec), or healer (offspec).  I’ve been playing this same druid since day 1.  (Well, I actually didn’t get the game until the 2nd or 3rd week it was out, but five years is a long time.)  I am a casual player.  I like to raid.  A lot of people throw around casual to mean many different things, so I’ll explain.  I play usually one day a week…for as long as I can manage (sometimes 6 hours).  It took me a whole year to level from 1-60, and I didn’t have any alts.  I healed at level 60.  I tanked at level 70.  Now I can do both.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to PUG into another guild’s ICC10 run.  It was a great group of players, very skilled, patient, and nice people.  We had a great run.  Prior to that, their guild had killed everything up to Sindragosa, and they were getting close on that fight.  I stepped in, only having seen the first 6 bosses.  I’m not sure why, but they decided to make me the main tank.  In our slightly less than 3 hours together, we took down everything up to and including Dreamwalker.  Out of all of that, Professor Putricide was the hardest boss.

Despite having never seen the Putricide fight before, they still wanted me to main tank him.  It did take a few tries, but in the end, he fell.  I believe that everyone else in the group had killed him before, so I (as the main tank) was the only one who was new to it.  They took the time to clearly explain everything to me and dealt kindly with my failed kiting as I learned the fight.  But by the end, I feel like I can explain it pretty well.  Since I’ve got some good friends who are currently struggling on this one, I’d like to share what I learned.

A huge part of this fight is the movement.  That was absolutely the biggest thing for me to learn.  Since boss placement is key to safe transitions, the main tank really needs to understand this well.  So here is the Putricide fight from the main tank’s perspective.

When you walk into the room, it looks like this.  (It’s a crude drawing, I know.  And possibly inaccurate, but it’ll get the point across.)  The boss (red circle) is standing near a table at the far end of the room.  There is a large somewhat circular pattern on the floor with lines pointing out toward the large orange and green tanks along the side walls.  The group can stand in the middle of the room as you finish buffs and explain the fight.

Since my drawing is designed to help Fuubaar learn the fight, the tank will be represented by the pink circle.  To start the fight, pull the boss toward the top of the circle in the room.

Shortly after the pull (5-10 seconds maybe), the boss will drop a big green puddle on the floor.  That’s your signal to move him to the next position, under the orange tank on the left side.

You will continue to tank him there until he casts the first unstable experiment.  Don’t jump the gun.  It’s a slow cast time, followed by a slow travel time before the experiment actually comes alive, picks a target, and tries to kill them.  As soon as it finds a target (DBM should warn you at that point), it’s time to pull the boss around the circle over toward the other tank (green).  I found it easiest to turn and strafe toward the bottom of the circle to get him out of the way, then I could face him again and back peddle around the edge of the circle to the point where the line comes out.

The same thing will apply here.  You’ll be tanking him here until the next unstable experiment.  In my group, he often transitioned to phase 2 (casts tear gas and stuns the raid for a few seconds) while we had him here.  If the unstable experiment didn’t go off, keep tanking him here after the phase transition.  Phase 2 is just like phase 1, except now you’ll have to watch for when he drops little orange vials on the ground next to him.  Pull him away a few yards and continue tanking.  You don’t want to be near those when they explode.   (They do damage and reduce chance to hit by 75%.)  Anyway, when he decides to cast the next unstable experiment, it’s time to kite him back over to the left side.

Phase 1 and 2 will just continue like this as the DPS whittles down his health and kills off the unstable experiments.  Meanwhile, the off-tank will be worrying about the big green slime pools on the ground and help with the unstable experiments.  If you’re the main tank, you don’t need to worry about that.  Just try not to stand in the green puddles or kite the boss through them.  You can go around.  The actual boss positioning isn’t nearly as critical as when you move him.  Like horseshoes and hand grenades, close is good enough.

When his health starts getting down close to 35%, you’ll need to be ready for the transition to phase 3.  Again, he will cast tear gas, stun the raid, and run over to the table for a few seconds.   The difference here is that you want to be near him at the table, so you can begin phase 3 tanking him right there.  So as his health get’s down to 35%, try to position yourself a bit closer to the table so you can pick him up quickly after the transition.

In phase 3, you will need to kite him around the perimeter of the room.  It doesn’t matter which way you go, but I went counter-clockwise.  The key here is that now all of those green puddles aren’t going to disappear because the off-tank is not playing the role of abomination anymore.  Now you just need to slowly kite him whenever he drops a green puddle or the orange vials.  Don’t go too fast or you’ll eventually run out of room on the floor.  This is going to be the DPS burn phase.  Fortunately, you probably won’t run out of space on the floor, because if he doesn’t die fast enough, the debuff that’s now being applied to you (the tank) will kill you soon.

This debuff stacks once every 10 seconds (I think), and it does AOE damage to the whole raid.  The more stacks, the more damage.  So it’s time to play the taunting game again.  (You’re taunt is hit-capped, right?)  When you (the main tank) get 2 stacks of the debuff, it’s time for the off-tank to taunt off of you.  He will continue Putricide on the kiting path around the room.  (You should stay with him, since you’ll be taunting back soon.)  Let the off-tank build up 3 stacks, then it’s time to taunt back off of him.  Your stacks won’t be gone by this point, but that’s okay.  Now, you pick up 3, then 4 stacks, and it’s time for the off-tank to taunt back.  He gets his 4th and 5th stacks, then you taunt back.  (If your off-tank happens to be a girl, pretend I said “her”.)  Hopefully by this time, the boss will be dead.  If not, it’s time for a wipe.  But most likely, unless you’ve got multiple DPS dead, you’ve probably got enough raid DPS to get through this phase just fine, assuming it’s the same group that killed the first 6 bosses.

Just one more note about the transition to phase 3.  I don’t know why, but on my first couple attempts at it, I (the main tank) died at the start of phase 3.  The boss didn’t hit that hard (about 12k melee), so I can only guess that I wasn’t getting enough heals because of 1) I was out of range or 2) there was a lot of raid damage that was being worked on from the end of phase 2.  Either way, keep an eye out as the tank and be ready to pop some cooldowns here to help out.  And it might be a good idea to have one of the healers follow you over toward the table as he get’s close to 35%.

Hopefully, I’ve prepared you well enough to go in there and polish off the 2nd wing of Icecrown Citadel.  Good luck!

Thanks Fin!  I know Fuu appreciates it and it's always good to understand an encounter from multiple perspectives.  I'd like to point out a few things for the DPS/Healers out there that seem to be key.  Definitely let me know your solutions to these "key thoughts":

•  In Phases 1 and 2, having the raid stack up to mitigate green "blowup" damage is key.  We usually mark one person as the "stacker". 
• It's also important in those phases that you stay close enough to the spawn point opposite of the tank position to be able to take advantage of the long (5sec) cast time prior to the ooze choosing a target.  This is valuable DPS time!
• Finally, it's imperative that any orange kiting path be kept in range of your healers or you're going to get squished.  Keep that in mind when running like hell.  

That's all I've got for now, maybe a follow up as we continue to learn.  Thanks again to Finwe for providing this tank's-eye-view of the PP fight!

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.

Stat changes in Cataclysm: Protection Paladin Style

Hey Gang!


So, Blizzard has finally announced how the stat changes might look when the new expansion comes out. Very very interesting. The blogosphere has Es'ploded with theories on how this will affect their classes and gear choices & what sandwiches taste better with Milk. You know.... the World (or Warcraft) will change as we know it now.

/scratches chin

If you are interested in the whole thing, here's the link to MMO-Champion where they have it laid out pretty nicely.

Now, I'm only going to look at the stats that will be effecting Protection Paladins/ Tanks in general. Obviously this is all speculation but who doesn't love to try to piece out what the Developers are trying to do.

Stamina: apparently there is going to be more of it. The Dev's say that they want big health pools to even out the spiky incoming damage. This will allow for healers to not be sweating so much if you, the tank, hit a really bad RNG string of hits from a boss. I'm excited to see how big average tanking health pools are going to get 75k? 100k? I can't really remember what my health pool looked like in TBC but I'm around 45-50k health in our 10-man ICC runs. Another interesting note that I caught was that DPS & Healer health pools were going to be MUCH larger than they are now. Health pools are sort of like a tank's epeen. My health pool is bigger than yours sorta thing.

Block Rating: Apparently, this is going to be staying on tanking gear but really revamped. It will now mitigate 30% of incoming damage that is blocked. Block rating will improve the chances of this happening but it will not be nearly as often as it is now. With this so called, "Not nearly as often" speech, I'm thinking that something will be done with our Holy Shield spell. It currently has 8 Charges that can be used depending on how fast the swing speed of the Mob/Boss is. I'm wondering if they will take this number down or if it needs to be used up more quickly before it expires. I'm going to believe this to be the first option because I don't think that blizzard really wants to screw with our rotation (969). If they did the second option, maybe the cooldown would stay the same but those charges only had 5 seconds or something to be used up. I'm pretty interested in this stat the most out of all because of how much the Paladin tanking style will change because of it. Cool stuff.

Parry: Ok from what I understand is that now, when you parry, 100% of the damage is missed and you swing faster. With this change, 50% of the damage is avoided from the next two swings "if they hit at all" What an interesting idea. So technically you will be missing 100% of 1 hit out of two. This seems to me like two swings where you are "blocking" 20% more damage than you would if you were to actually Block the incoming damage. Thus, making Parry a pretty sexy stat if you ask me. They also took out that stupid Parry haste mechanic. No more Parry gibing yourself? I never quite understood it anyways so good riddance really.

Armor: Other than them saying that they [aka the Developers] want to change the scaling of Armor on gear, they want to bring other armor types (Cloth, Leather, Mail) up on the amount of armor that it has on it. The example that the Blues give is a normal Tank has around 26-28k armor where the most decked out mage has around 2k. That is a little ridiculous really. Another great point that was brought up was who are the real losers in the Armor department and it isn't the clothies.

Ok here's a question for you... who dies the most in your raids? I'll give you 10 guesses and the first 9 don't count.

Answer: Rogues!

Clothies have ways to boost their armor and give themselves distance from Bosses who could violate your trust. Rogues on the other hand, they poke the boss in the backside and dance with the big boys.

I think that this is a good direction to head in if they want survivability to beef up a bit.

Two stats that are more or less, going away are:

Block Value: As I talked about before, you will no longer see Block value on gear as a stat since now there will be a constant 30% damage reduction every time you block. That's HUGE! Right now, when I block, I probably mitigate 1.5-2k damage per blocked hit. That's absolutely nothing when a boss hits your for 25-35k a hit.

To give you a mental picture of how HUGE (if they were to implement this however):

Let's say you were greeted by a very angry dragon who apparently you insulted by claiming that she bad breath that could kill a Rhino in its path. She decides that she wants to turn you into a crisp then snack on you later.

With the current block this would be like going into the fight with a feather pillow and hiding behind it. I'm pretty sure I would be wetting my plate by then, creating horrible rust problems in the future.

With this new proposal, this would be like going into the fight with Bomb Shelter Door. Bravery would throb through your veins as you pummel that stupid dragon to death then to the Macarena on her dead carcass (sorry I'm a human female, we have the crappiest dance... we get it)

The only way that I could figure out how this would be even remotely possible would be to nerf the Block rating by a metric ton. Because if you at least blocked every hit (not including Misses, Parries, & dodges) these bosses would have to hit like WAY more than your health pool could ever be or if RNG was unkind that day, you would end up as a smear on the floor before any healer could have time to use a single GCD. This is something that Blizzard is trying to go away from so I'm assuming that with the E-peen Health pools that tanks are going to have to soak up normal (none mitigated/ avoided) hits a lot more often but when these actions do happen, it's like a healer vacation.

*Confetti*

Defense Rating: /waves goodbye and boots it out the door

As the levels grow, so does the amount of Defense we needed on gear to hit the cap. 540 Defense for Raid tanking wasn't all that difficult once you started receiving big gobs of it.

Here is how I saw gearing up for tanking when WotLK started.

Ding 80: Options are crafted gear and a measly few questing pieces along the way. The crafted gear was great because it got you to defense cap but it didn't have much else because of the itemization. So you start tanking heroics... oh look something shiny that I found in the armpit of this dead boss. Let's equip it because it's pretty much green across the scale... oh wait... I can't use it because I won't be Defense capped anymore. I guess I'll wait until I get enough badges to purchase Heroic Emblem Pieces that have quite a bit of defense on it.

Once you got past the awkward phase of Defense, it becomes too much. By the time you are in T-9 you have SO much Defense you don't even know what to do with it. Blizzard made it so that the stat itself wasn't wasted like Hit rating is for DPS (or healers if you're Fulguralis). I believe a nice transition would have made this MUCH easier. For lower level gear having blue gem slots because you are Defense capped with the Crafted gear, then slowly have gear that's an upgrade for you in heroics with gobs more yellow gems for Defense balancing.

Anyways, Defense rating is gone.

But Fuu, how will we become uncritable?!

Great question little one, how about using Righteous Fury. Flip it on & you're now defense capped. Bingo Bango Bongo, you're a druid :P

Again, this is ALL speculation from what I've read thus far from sources (MMO-Champion and other bloggers). It's actually really fun to dream of one day tanking with a Fire resistant Bomb Shelter Door. Fuu is really going to have to renew her Stormwind Gym membership if she's going to tank with the big boys. Carrying around that crap is heavy work and I don't want man arms!

What stat changes are you excited about? Is it the Armor change for you Rogues out there? I'll bet it is ;)

<3 Fuu

L2KiteNoob!

Hey Gang!

So, other than buying a new home, playing Aion, Playing Dragon Age: Origins, fencing (the sport not the act of putting up a fence), full time job, and being a wife, I've had all sorts of time to play WoW (/end sarcasm).

As you may or may not know, I'm tanking for our ICC-10-man group on Monday nights. Even though we only raid once a week for two whopping hours (that's if our little Ret. Pally is on time ;)) we've made it all the way to Rotface without too much fuss.

Marrowgar -two shotted the first night we saw him (easy as pie)

Lady Deathwhisper- she was a Lady PITA and she still is. For some unknown reason, our OT would die right before we got the Mana Shield down so I would have to solo tank her. We finally got it so that he was surviving the last waves. Good Stuff.

Battleship - two shotted our first night & get this one every night we attempt it. It's easy & fun. I really enjoy it even if it gets me a little sea sick at the beginning.

Saurfang Jr.- Once we figured out how to tank him, he wasn't so bad at all. This fight relies on our DPS to be high & the Blood Beasts to go down quickly. They do a fine job and have excelled at this fight ever since we got it down the first time. We never have more than one mark before he falls.

Trash Pulls before Precious & Stinking - for some unknown reason, when we pull this, we GET THE WHOLE ROOM EVERY SINGLE TIME! We look at the two A-bombs and think ok just make sure you don't get the bouncing monkeys and we're fine. We always get them and they bring the mad Scientists & two more ugly big angry mobs. It's an huge AoE fest where half of our group dies every time. It's sort of humorous really.

Festergut- Once we figured out the "Paladin bubble" trick, it actually is just a DPS race. Not too hard if we can keep the OT up for the first phase. Funny thing though, I have died every time we succeed in this fight. *shrug* if it gets the job done I guess.

Now, we are currently working on Rotface. This is my most challenging fight yet. I'm the Ooze Kiter. Now, thinking back, what other fight requires such an awkward job for a tank? Gluth comes to mind but I feel it's a bit different because other people are helping you out with the Zombies. Grobbulus was awkward for me but it wasn't all that terribly hard. Just keep my finger on the Reverse key and smash my keys like I normally do and turn when the floor says so (the grate path).

Rotface is a completely different challenge for me in tanking. What our group was doing was, I would stay outside of the group and when the first person got the Mut. Injection, they would run to me, I would cleanse them and they would merge the oozes together. I've seen the Tankspot videos and read all of the strats that I could get my grubby little hands on but it's just not the same as me actually doing this. I've dealt with adds before. Hell, I was the ADD tank for all of BC. Add tanking doesn't bother me but it's the cleansing & the kiting I feel that's really screwin me up. We probably did this fight around 6-7 (edit: 11) times on Monday before our 2 hour mark hit and we had to quit. We continued to make improvements throughout the night, which is wonderful. That night, I wasn't at all frustrated, I would laugh about forgetting to do some of the more simple stuff, like keep the big ooze on me when I was running. I was so focused on getting the path right, not running through puddles, getting to the DPS or healers to cleanse them. It wasn't just one aspect of this whole kiting thing that was tripping me up, it was a combo of all of the above.

Best way I can describe it is like rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time. Neither one of these tasks is all that hard but putting the two together and you look like an idiot because you are patting your tummy and rubbing your head. But throw this extra tid bit in that every time you screw up the combination of rubbing & patting, 9-24 other people get really pissed about it...and you die in a green puddle of death.

I understand that I could potentially make someone else be the kiter while I sit in the middle where I feel comfortable but what would I learn from it? What if these type of mechanics show up in another area in another raid down the line and I HAVE to do it. I don't want to gimp myself and pass up an opportunity to grow in my tanking skills.

So here's the question for all of you out there (tanks or not), what has been the steepest learning curve for you & your group thus far in your WoW career? It doesn't have to be WotLK. It also doesn't have to be a single fight either, maybe a type of mechanic really trips you up. Also, how did you overcome this problem to achieve your goal?

I'm curious if everyone feels the pressure on similar mechanics or if each person has a different take on this.

<3 Fuu