official World of Warcraft

[DrunkenBeard]

Thanks guys for your help with the achievements :) I decided to stop Loremaster for now and I'm working actively on Champion of The Frozen Wastes (11/15) and Glory of The Hero (only 12 as of now) for the Red Proto Drake. I wanted some help on gearing, here's my Armory. I managed to get T9 legs and hands and working on the chest, the other 200/219 are just fillers until I have anough Triumph to buy better pieces. Also, someone told me that I can resell tier gear to the vendor and get back the Triumph Emblems, in this case is it wise to hold on gemming my 232 gear so I can replace it with 245 gear after doing TotC and getting trophies ?

PS : You'll notice my low crit, that's because I'm trying to cap haste at 400 (solar rotation) before gemming for crit. I'm also over-hitting, wich should be fixed with a full tier set and adequate gemming.

[Slane]

Thanks guys for your help with the achievements :) I decided to stop Loremaster for now and I'm working actively on Champion of The Frozen Wastes (11/15) and Glory of The Hero (only 12 as of now) for the Red Proto Drake. I wanted some help on gearing, here's my Armory. I managed to get T9 legs and hands and working on the chest, the other 200/219 are just fillers until I have anough Triumph to buy better pieces. Also, someone told me that I can resell tier gear to the vendor and get back the Triumph Emblems, in this case is it wise to hold on gemming my 232 gear so I can replace it with 245 gear after doing TotC and getting trophies ?

PS : You'll notice my low crit, that's because I'm trying to cap haste at 400 (solar rotation) before gemming for crit. I'm also over-hitting, wich should be fixed with a full tier set and adequate gemming.

You can only sell gear back within 2 hours of purchase. To get 245 you have to turn in 232 and the token. Gem and chant it (feel free to use blue quality if your confident you'll be doing ToC25 TOGC10 shortly). Also avoid buying legs/gloves (to late now), simply because that's the gear that drops in VoA. You should be running VoA 10/25 every week. Might have a hard time getting into a 10, but you should be able to sneak into a 25 (now and days 25's carry like 4-6 people while ten might carry 1-2). Other than that, just keeping running heroics and you should be able to replace just about everything via that, once your able to run HoR/PoS/FoS you'll get some real nice 232 pieces. I'd also run those on normal to replace some pieces with 219 (I think). I'm also hoping it's just an armory bug, but you need a relic and offhand.

[xMetian]

YAY. Looks like there is an new Beta Build.. but it's not on the servers, I still hope they fix Goblins (: .

[Noveed]

Good good blizzard, nerfing the crap out of almost every class/spec I play.

So Volley was removed from hunters, Multi shot gets changed and looks kinda cool its a bit like FoK so to speak. Not bad looking forward to that.

However I do not see why they nerf the crap out of all the damage that the shots do and attack power scaling :/ really bizarre. Increasing cool down for finishing moves and making them weaker is great logic.

Next holy pala nerf yikes that kinda sucks too. Divine Plea CD increased but the mana return decreased. Doesn't make sense, true paladins may have high mana pools and but still don't think that change was needed.

Priest changes on the other hand are looking pretty sweet, DK changes are almost non existent but then again it is the newest class and not many changes may be needed on them.

[ylcard]

They're doing the same for Prot Paladins, I don't know about Holy Paladins, but DP is a core Prot ability.. the CD is less important for us, but the % is a slap in the face, considering they're bumping the mana cost as on HW, as if "don't use this spell please".

I trust Blizzard that everything will eventually be balanced and playable, but I'm not looking forward to some of the changes to Paladins..

I saw the need for an overhaul in BC, but not now, we're not broken, go fix Warriors or something...

[I am Redbeard]

Afternoon to ya'

I've changed my name from IanPete to REDBEARDD.

Just wanted to (Kind of) inform you all that my WoW Blog has received an update including pictures! :) This is something I'd really like to keep up with and have other people keep up with as well. I have a goal of eventually become a columnist for WoW.com and I think maintaining my own blog would be a great place to start.

Red Beard's Adventures

[Rigby]

Breaking news, a blue just confirmed on the official forums that the raid instance Zul'Gurub is history in Cataclysm. :o

Better farm those mounts while you can I guess.

Source

[Minifig]

We recently released a new Cataclysm beta launcher that allows you to stream game data while you play. We've received a lot of feedback from you regarding this new feature, and that feedback has allowed us to improve the player experience significantly.

In the next beta patch, you'll receive a new Cataclysm beta launcher that includes several updates to in-game streaming. Here's a quick preview of some of the upcoming changes:

• Improved three-stage progress bar
• Download speed improvements
• Detailed peer-to-peer connection information
• Bandwidth detection, which will improve the play experience of those with low bandwidth
• New UI with a Cataclysm-inspired theme
• Many bug fixes

We encourage you to continue posting your feedback about the streaming launcher, as we're constantly looking for ways to get you into the game faster and more smoothly.

Thank you!

Linky.

For Spoilers .. click it.

[the evn show]

Beta added new dungeons, level cap is 85, and uldum is unlocked. I've also finally got friends on beta to play with now.

I can get out of the pugtastic craptacular and spend some time with people with people who don't need to be reminded

to pull down their pants when they go to the bathroom. I might start recording runs to show the basic strategies for

the new encounters.

Unrelated: I'm getting shadowmourne on my ridiculously bad, "I only leveled this so I'd have a miner", played oncee a week alt.

I don't care about the weapon but I want another tabard of the lightbringer and I'm not in a big hurry to

drop 100k gold on one.

[Shaun N.]

We recently released a new Cataclysm beta launcher that allows you to stream game data while you play. We've received a lot of feedback from you regarding this new feature, and that feedback has allowed us to improve the player experience significantly.

In the next beta patch, you'll receive a new Cataclysm beta launcher that includes several updates to in-game streaming. Here's a quick preview of some of the upcoming changes:

• Improved three-stage progress bar
• Download speed improvements
• Detailed peer-to-peer connection information
• Bandwidth detection, which will improve the play experience of those with low bandwidth
• New UI with a Cataclysm-inspired theme
• Many bug fixes

We encourage you to continue posting your feedback about the streaming launcher, as we're constantly looking for ways to get you into the game faster and more smoothly.

Thank you!

Linky.

For Spoilers .. click it.

Screenshot please, I don't want to wait till I get home to look at it :D

[PixilEyes]

100K? That is a bit much?

[PixilEyes]

So will Cata help with the "Your GS is too low blah blah blah problem?" When you usually out dps them anyway.

[Minifig]

Screenshot please, I don't want to wait till I get home to look at it :D

The new UI hasn't been released, but, the new launcher is.

[_neutrino Veteran]

Screenshot please, I don't want to wait till I get home to look at it :D

Here you go.

[the evn show]

100K? That is a bit much?

You're talking about an item that requires a minimum of 500 man hours to produce and that cannot be produced by less than 25 people and has a fixed material cost in the 10-20k range. It's an item with a very limited supply?likely less than 20 per server?of which only a small percentage will every come to market (for example my guild has 5 or 6 now, but they're all distributed to raiders and it would not be acceptable to sell it to somebody outside the guild).

As for spending that much: after major expenses you can last basically forever on 20,000g. There's no game-play change between having say 200k instead of 20k the same way that having 10k instead of 1000g switches things up. If you've got a giant pile of gold it doesn't do you any good sitting in the bank and if there's nothing to spend it on then you might as well pick up rare vanity items.

More importantly, anybody with 100k has the skills to make cash and that's far more valuable than actual gold in the bank. They can afford to blow it all because they can make more and it's useless to have so much anyway.

So will Cata help with the "Your GS is too low blah blah blah problem?" When you usually out dps them anyway.

No, not even a little bit.

Hater's gonna hate, baddies gonna bad. If anything the fewer options (ie: 10/25 are the same lockout) will mean that there will be less skilled players willing to take a risk with pugs and the idea that gear = skill will become even more enforced.

I posted a video in this thread months ago showing a mage in level 60 blues doing 3500 DPS in level 80 heroic 5-man content and even that wasn't enough to convince people here that there's more to being not-clueless than just having some magical amount of gear.

[Slane]

So Battered Hilt drop'd today. I won, currently waiting out the 5 instances per hour non-sense rule to enter SWP and snag that achievement.

Evn and/or other beta tester. Hoping some of ya have run the new dungeons. Impressions?

[Shaun N.]

Here you go.

Cheers bud!

[ylcard]

So Battered Hilt drop'd today. I won, currently waiting out the 5 instances per hour non-sense rule to enter SWP and snag that achievement.

Evn and/or other beta tester. Hoping some of ya have run the new dungeons. Impressions?

SWP ? Why would you enter Sunwell for that ? I think you're confused a bit :)

[Ambroos]

SWP ? Why would you enter Sunwell for that ? I think you're confused a bit :)

When you talk to the guards you get teleported into SWP. I don't know if it counts as a seperate instance, but it might...

In reaction to a post on the last page:

I've always played a Holy Paladin, since I started playing WoW right after 2.2 was released. I've tried retri and prot, but never made it longer than a month or so with anything but Holy, and I leveled as Holy aswell (shock shock shocking mobs).

Now in the Cataclysm beta, I feel like they've completely thrown away the Holy Paladin way of playing. We have always had a slow, costly but huge heal and a fast, decent and very cheap heal. Now they're completely reversing it to slow, cheap and worthless and fast, huge and manadraining? Sigh... I've tried it on the beta, and I really, really don't like it. As it was said before, Holy Paladins weren't broken, not at all. Just by fixing numbers and adding the new stuff (Light's Dawn and HP/WoG) it would've been more than fine, really.

What made Holy Paladins unique is, in my opinion, completely gone, and that's a shame.

If the complaint is that Holy Paladins can't go OOM, then look at the TBC model. It's all the procentual mana gains that made int-stacking Holy Paladins so undrainable. In Cataclysm Intellect is already being merged with Spellpower so I suspect procentual mana gains will go down a lot aswell. With the nerfs to Divine Plea and everything I see no reason not to keep the old system here. Yes, of course on some encounters it might not be fair compared to other healers without a fast, efficient heal, but does that even matter? There have always been fights where some healers did better than others, why can't that be the situation in Cataclysm... ?

[the evn show]

If the complaint is that Holy Paladins can't go OOM, then look at the TBC model. It's all the procentual mana gains that made int-stacking Holy Paladins so undrainable.

Nobody goes OOM anymore and while that's a problem, it's not unique to paladins. The real issue is that one paladin can put out twice the throughput of any other healer.

Consider this break down.

Notice that one class is represented in numbers well beyond all the others?

Notice how the first slot is occupied by that same class 10 out of 12 times?

Notice that class is only displaced from their spot on a huge AOE orgy (BQL) or on a fight where one classes gimmick is powerful (LK)?

Take a look at the break down for any particular person in those logs and you'll see:

• Holy light: ~65%
  
• Glyph of Holy Light: ~15%
  
• Beacon of light: ~10%
  
• Judgement of light: ~10%
  
• Other incidentals like sacred shield, holy shock, FoL, LoH make up < 5%
  

Notice that the class is using one button: holy light.

That's the problem: a one button class that out performs every other at an essential roll.

It's no different from fire mages in classic, hunters in TBC, and to a lesser extent druids at the end of WoTLK.

This time it's your turn to feel the nerf bat.

In Cataclysm Intellect is already being merged with Spellpower so I suspect procentual mana gains will go down a lot aswell. With the nerfs to Divine Plea and everything I see no reason not to keep the old system here. Yes, of course on some encounters it might not be fair compared to other healers without a fast, efficient heal, but does that even matter? There have always been fights where some healers did better than others, why can't that be the situation in Cataclysm? ?

A fast, efficient, high though-put heal is pretty much the most important thing in the game.

• So long as tank healing is a niche dominated by paladins the class will be overly valued.
  
• So long as paladins are worthless as raid healers it'll be impossible to make 5-man content with significant AOE components.
  
• So long as paladins are a one button class the people who play that will be saddled with a trivial game-play experience and no way to differentiate themselves based on skill.
  

[Ambroos]

Nobody goes OOM anymore and while that's a problem, it's not unique to paladins. The real issue is that one paladin can put out twice the throughput of any other healer.

Consider this break down.

Notice that one class is represented in numbers well beyond all the others?

Notice how the first slot is occupied by that same class 10 out of 12 times?

Notice that class is only displaced from their spot on a huge AOE orgy (BQL) or on a fight where one classes gimmick is powerful (LK)?

Take a look at the break down for any particular person in those logs and you'll see:

• Holy light: ~65%
  
• Glyph of Holy Light: ~15%
  
• Beacon of light: ~10%
  
• Judgement of light: ~10%
  
• Other incidentals like sacred shield, holy shock, FoL, LoH make up < 5%
  

Notice that the class is using one button: holy light.

That's the problem: a one button class that out performs every other at an essential roll.

It's no different from fire mages in classic, hunters in TBC, and to a lesser extent druids at the end of WoTLK.

This time it's your turn to feel the nerf bat.

A fast, efficient, high though-put heal is pretty much the most important thing in the game.

• So long as tank healing is a niche dominated by paladins the class will be overly valued.
  
• So long as paladins are worthless as raid healers it'll be impossible to make 5-man content with significant AOE components.
  
• So long as paladins are a one button class the people who play that will be saddled with a trivial game-play experience and no way to differentiate themselves based on skill.
  

Very nice breakdown, however that is not what the TBC healing model used to be like, and WotLK only got that way in 3.2...

In BC you had to use a healthy mix between Flash of Light, Holy Light and Holy Shock. MOST Holy Palas now in WotLK indeed just stack Intellect and spam Holy Light.

Look at my spec and gemming (and libram) for example: http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmane&cn=Theralas

Using this spec leads to a waaaay higher variety in healing, more fun and more skill involved, THOUGH it relies heavily on ALL available Holy Paladin spells exactly for their specific niches. It's a lot like BC-style healing aswell. Basically consists of using Holy Shock whenever possible or for Dmg spikes, followed by an instant Flash of Light. For periods of heavy damage you can switch over to Holy Light, which is HUGE because of Spellpower stacking. This spec also gets a lot out of Sacred Shield, since I have a 100% FoL crit chance when Sacred Shield is up, etc etc...

I'd link you some logs but I didn't save any lately so I can't... I've done ICC10 HC with it (11/12) and it worked just fine, resulting in me being around or topping the metres every time. Also an upside about this spec is the way increased mobility, ability to raid heal (Spam FoL on raid with Beacon on tank), way faster reaction time (Instants) and nearly no mana problems since Flash of Light is very efficient (I've never had to Divine Plea with this spec) In ICC25 HC (9/12) I almost always topped the metres aswell, leading to two very jealous Intadins.

In Cataclysm, the nature of most encounters would already be enough to make this spec have to manage mana. You'd have to use Holy Light more since there will probably be more damage, leading to you having to use more Holy Lights, leading to more mana usage. This would at least keep a part of the Holy Paladin playstyle intact, the playstyle that was there BEFORE 3.2.

It might just be sadness, but I love this way of playing Holy Paladins as it is a lot more challenging and just fun than the other one, and I'm going to be very sad if Cataclysm will be the way it is now in the beta.

[Minifig]

Such a nice update to the ground textures.

[Prosidius]

I'm in the cataclysm beta finally. Bought a key for 30K gold.

[Minifig]

I'm in the cataclysm beta finally. Bought a key for 30K gold.

*laughing* If you get another key in a stroke of modest irony, can I use it? I plan to stream (on my Ustream) it live. :)

[the evn show]

In BC you had to use a healthy mix between Flash of Light, Holy Light and Holy Shock. MOST Holy Palas now in WotLK indeed just stack Intellect and spam Holy Light.

Holy paladins were 'broken' for 90% of BC. They never really recovered from the nerfs they received in patch 2.0.6 (and even then they still weren't ideal: we had to get ours attuned for SSC/TK by having them respec prot or having someone else clearing the trials for them). Looking over screenshots from sunwell and I don't see any there (unless for some reason we had less than 4 shamans). If we did bring one we'd toss them on tank healing because they were useless for anything else. Blessings were powerful and we had to tollerate sub-standard classes to get them.

When we were pushing through m'uru it wasn't unusual to have holy paladins, mages, and DS-spec'd priests 'raiding' from outside the instance. Have them cast their buffs and then zone out while the 'better' classes did the real work.

Using this spec leads to a waaaay higher variety in healing, more fun and more skill involved, THOUGH it relies heavily on ALL available Holy Paladin spells exactly for their specific niches

The fact that you can play this way and still out-perform everyone else is a clear indication that the class is broken.

You're playing less than optimally and still out-performing every other class that could fill role you play.

The issue isn't mana consumption, it's single and two-target througput.

Would you fell like your class was viable if your heals hit for 50% less? That's the situation everyone else is in when they look at paladins. Suppse they trivialized your niche: tanks stopped taking any more damage than the rest of the raid (think Sunwell style AOE orgies): would you feel like your class was well suited to healing 10 people at a time?

In ICC25 HC (9/12) I almost always topped the metres aswell, leading to two very jealous Intadins.

When you look at the logs of the best-performing paladins in the game the play style you've chosen isn't represented.

You might be getting by and you might be beating face-rolling players in your guild but you're not beating the face-rolling players on the world stage.

If anything you should be arguing for drastic paladin changes because people pushing one button are performing substantially better than players

like you that try to use many of their class abilities. The current mechanics make it impossible to tell a skilled player from somebody who's programmed

their G15 to press the holy light button every 1.2 seconds (if anything the afk players will look better than somebody who's trying to be more involved).