Previously in Block Value:  Back in pre-3.2 world, Libram of Obstruction was a nice entry level relic that, while it provided superior block value to Libram of the Sacred Shield, it did not have the 100% uptime that the Sacred Shield libram provided and thus was inferior to its ilvl 226 cousin.  When 3.2.0 hit, they made the sweeping change to upgrade all block value on armor to double its previous contribution and simply doubling the duration on trinkets and other such affects that temporarily increased block value.  This from a quick and dirty standpoint sounds fine.  However, suddenly a libram with high block value and a little over 50% uptime goes to 100% uptime and a higher level libram with lower, but 100% uptime block value is surpassed.

Now that most tanking paladins have either downgraded to the Libram of Obstruction or upgraded to the Libram of Defiance, Blizzard is pushing out a fix.  It’ll take the Libram of the Sacred Shield up to 450 block value with 20 second duration on use of Holy Shield.  That’s 200% (and change) uptime and roughly 100 block value higher.

It’s an upgrade and one we’ll likely use (until Cataclysm hits), but a slight annoyance overall in gear upgrading and downgrading.

Tags: 3.2.2, block value, libram, Protection, PTR

While neither Worgen nor Goblins will be taking up the Holy Sword and Shield (or just a big nasty two-hander) for the Light, the Tauren will be.  Still no news on how the Lore for this will work out, but it has been confirmed at Blizzcon.

Tags: Blizzcon, Cowadin, tauren

According to datamined information from the current PTR, there might be a new Paladin race in the coming future… Tauren.

This news comes on the heels of a strange quest in Northrend that asks you to return a shield to an injured warrior in Thunder Bluff.  Upon finishing this quest, you can overhear a conversation where the Druidic masters in Elder Rise contemplate a move toward the Sun to balance the Night Elves’ worship of the Moon.  The speculation of the Tauren moving towards the ‘Light’ has been brought up in several lore forums across the internet.  Now with the datamined information, things are starting to line up… either that or Blizzard is messing with the dataminers again.

However, another Horde paladin race isn’t a bad idea.  Adding an extra Shaman race to Alliance (datamined as a Dwarf… and I called that one) and new Druid races to both sides (datamined as Troll for Horde and speculated as Worgen for Alliance) would give a little more of an option when the eventual Faction Change ability arrives.  We’ll see how things turn out in the end.

Tags: datamined, speculation, tauren

Seal of Command on PTR

According to the 3.2.2 Patch Notes:

Seal of Command:This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack.

I was able to test this a little bit on the PTR last night.  This is a little bit sick.

Currently, it appears each melee hit will proc this attack.  This includes white damage and Crusader Strike as well as Divine Storm hits.  And before the question is asked if Judgements also do this, the answer is no.

The damage of the seal on each chained target appears to be no different than the original, so no diminishing chaining like Chain Heal.  I was able to get a total of 5 Seal of Command procs off of a single Divine Storm which hit 2 targets themselves.  This implies that currently there might be some cross-chaining from Divine Storm.  If this is true, look for this to be nerfed in an upcoming PTR patch.

Overall, the concept is really great.  This gives Retribution in PVE a better seal for dealing with trash as well as giving Retribution back some teeth in PVP.  I’ll be interested in how this evolves over the course of the PTR.

Tags: seal of command

There are some interesting changes announced in the first draft of the 3.2.2 patch notes for paladins.  Righteous Fury dropped from 90% to 80% bonus threat.  Touched by the Light spell power conversion changed from 10/20/30% Stamina to 10/20/30% Strength (drops my spellpower about 50 points) in order to nerf Prot Paladins in spellpower plate.  However, Seal of Command is now a cleave of some sort and affects multiple targets.  Testing is needed.

Notes and more commentary after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Hammer of Justice, judgements of the just, righteous fury, seal of command, touched by the light

I was reading WoW.com (formerly WoWInsider.com) today and they had a breakfast topic about missing professions and how you might implement them.  For a while, I’ve thought that a Woodworking profession would be helpful.  Just have a profession that specializes in making things like staffs, wands, polearms, maces, bows, crossbows, arrows, and trinkets.  Some of these things have been shunt over into other professions from time to time, but they really fit more readily into a woodworking craft.  With the newer technology that Blizzard has put into the game to allow larger inanimate objects to blowup or fall over (this one of the two Argent Tournament gathering quests comes to mind), adding trees that people can harvest throughout Azeroth shouldn’t be hard at all.

I’ve also thought for a while that WoW has needed another single-slot profession.  Something that one could pair with either Tailoring or Enchanting that was self-contained.  Currently, if you choose one of those two professions, you’re usually expected to grab the other.  While this is fine for cloth wearers like Mages, Warlocks, and Priests, it means you often don’t see anyone outside of a cloth wearing class have Enchanting.  Another single-slot non-gathering profession would be helpful with remedying this as Enchanting feeds off of the ability to disenchant green (uncommon) or better quality weapons and armor.  A gathering profession doesn’t help with this, because they don’t really create anything.  You must have a profession to create items.  The alternative is to run a lot of dungeons to keep up a steady supply materials.  While this is also used to shore up the amount of mats the enchanter has anyways, this makes it a difficult profession to just skill up as you level your character.

Well, this is my idea for helping fix this particular fault in the current batch of professions.  Anyone else have any ideas?

(Edit:  Posted the idea in the WoW Suggestion Forums.)

Tags: enchanting, professions, tailoring, woodworking, wow.com

…and why you won’t see them in the forseeable future.

There are exactly four reasons why you won’t be able to switch races within the Horde or Alliance:

• Night Elf Druids
• Tauren Druids
• Draenai Shamen
• Blood Elf Paladins

These four race/class combinations cannot change to any other race in their faction without having to change their class.  I imagine this comes down to one of those scenarios where if not everyone can do something, no one can.  Now, there might be some adjustments in the future.  New races may be added in the future or the ability for current races to tap into existing classes (such as Blood Elf druids).

For Druids, the ability for Blood Elves to aspire to the balance of nature is a real possibility according to lore.  The one concern would be mirroring this change on the Alliance side as well.  None of the other Alliance races lean towards the idea of druidic balance with the exception of the Wildhammer clan of Dwarves.   The Wildhammer Dwarves have a tenuous relationship with the Alliance as well as their Ironforge brethren in vanilla WoW and a slightly better connection when long lost Thane Kurdran Wildhammer suddenly reappeared in Shadowmoon Valley of Outland commanding the Wildhammer Stronghold.

For Shamen on the Alliance side, there is one possibility of using an existing race which is, again, Dwarves via the Wildhammer Dwarves of the Hinterlands as well as the Dark Iron Dwarves.  Though the Dark Iron clan is usually at war with the rest of Azeroth, the Wildhammer clan is still peaceable with their Bronzebeard brethren.  Along with their ability to become Druids, they also have a fair number of Shamen in their ranks.  They’re just really not that into the things normal Dwarves are into (other than treasure).  The problem with the Wildhammer Dwarves from both a Shaman and Druid standpoint is that they’d require a fairly in depth revamp of the normal Dwarven starting area.  It could be done, but it would be a slight pain in the butt.

For alternatives to Blood Elf Paladins already within the Horde, we’d have to look at our old friends the Forsaken.  Sir Zeliek in Naxxramas has shown us that even after falling to the plague and being brought back as an Undead minion, one can still call upon the Light.  This ability to still connect with the Light is also shown in the Forsaken’s ability to become Priests.  It is a small logical step to say that some Forsaken who were Paladins in their former lives may still be able to go forth and purge the mindless Scourge of the Plaguelands.

However, until there are more paladin races in the Horde, more shaman races in the Alliances, and more druidic races in both, we won’t see in-faciton race changes appear in the game.

Tags: Blood Elf, Draenai, Druid, Dwarf, Forsaken, Night Elf, Paladin, race change, Shaman

Yes, I know it’s shaman stuff, but my Paladin hasn’t copied over yet.  Enjoy.

Tags: 3.2, PTR, Shaman, Totem

I recently did a piece on new 3.1.0 tanking builds.  However, looking at it after some contemplation, I may have been wrong in one of my presumptions.  I’ve been using Benediction as a standard in my tanking builds for a while due to the low mana pool as well as high cost of some of the spells *cough*Consecration*cough* that we use.  The problem is that I think it might a waste of five talent points in 3.1.0.

Guarded by the Light is being changed so that every time you are attacked, you’ll refresh the duration of Divine Plea.  In my little bit of playing on the PTR this almost guarantees 100% uptime of Divine Plea during a fight which means a nice infinite mana source.  So, the question I’m asking myself is:  Do I still need Benediction?

Well, I’ve run the numbers on my Blood Elf tankadin and here is what I’ve come up with:

First, a little explanation.  I’ve got across the top the ability, the percentage of base mana that each ability uses, the cost based on my mana as an 80 Blood Elf, the cost with Benediction, the savings from Benediction, and Divine Plea return per global cooldown for me in my tanking gear.

This is a full (and expensive with Consecrate) 96969 rotation.  I did say full rotation meaning it goes 18 seconds and repeats back at the beginning.  This means that every 18 seconds you are spending 4826 mana on the rotation.  You’d be able to save 488 mana using benediction per rotation.  That’s a Judgement and Shield of Righteousness or Hammer of the Righteous worth of savings with a little change left-over.  Not all that much, but definitely appreciated.

With the Divine Plea change, you’ll be gaining 1693 mana for every 18 second rotation.  That’s over three times the mana you’re saving normally with Benediction.  You’ll be completely regaining your entire mana pool every minute from Divine Plea.  All of this is without taking Spiritual Attunement into consideration (which is now talented in the protection tree).

All in all, there isn’t much of a need for Benediction in the tanking builds now.  It also shouldn’t be an issue when you over-gear the content as well.  Now I just need to figure out what to do with those extra 5 talent points.

Tags: 3.1.0, 96969, base mana, Benediction, divine plea, Guarded by the Light, PTR