Late Night Blue Posts, DLST, Consortium Bags

Holy & Protection Paladin Thoughts

We are concerned that Holy and Protection may have lost too much dps as “collateral damage” from the Ret nerfs. It is something we’re working on now, though I do believe Holy dps is still a lot better than it was in BC. Healers will always level more slowly than dps specs since using your abilities may keep you alive but doesn’t always kill stuff faster. (source)

Healing Gear and Spell Power

There are still pieces which are more appropriate for one class or spec than another. Some of the changes we made, such as spell power, will blur the lines slightly more. Our goal with that was more to help say an undergeared paladin get healing gear or an undergeared warlock be able to benefit from the “healing” cloth rather than just sharding it.

I’ve played a priest enough (I’ve played every class) to know that it can be frustrating when a paladin wants to roll on a piece of cloth, but most of the time the raid leaders I have run with tend to let the cloth-wearers get first dibs. I agree that there is a big social aspect to loot distribution. To some extent, that is by design. (source)

11-Point Protection Talent Thoughts

We’re not sure if we’re going to do this or not. If we do it (make an 11-point Prot talent that is attractive to Ret) it would be for these reasons:

– It would be cooler if the talent was something fun for Prot and not something they “need” to tank.
– In our experience, Ret paladins who PvP often go down into Prot anyway to get Imp Hammer of Justice.
– I suggested we might offer Ret more PvP utility since we are stripping some of the burst damage, so PvE Retadins might not want this ability anyway.
– We wouldn’t want this talent to be something Prot would never get and Ret would always get. If anything we need to err on the side of something Prot definitely wants. (source)

Day Light Savings Time

Don’t forget that day light savings time comes to an end tonight. So at 2:00 a.m. on 11/1/08 you’ll want to set your clocks back 1 hour if you live a location that adheres to DLST.

Consortium Gem Bags

One final reminder, it’s the 1st of the month so don’t forget to pick up your consortium gem bag for this month from the NPC out in nagrand.

Ret Paladin PvP Nerf Incoming

Well, there’s no easy way to say it without enraging the fury of paladin community…but, here’s round 2 of the paladin PvP nerfs.

Retribution Paladin Nerfs

I’m attempting to post this early since the Ret community felt totally surprised last time.

We are looking at some way of making Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield mutually exclusive. This may be through Forbearance, if we can reduce the Forbearance duration through a hotfix. The bubble is intended as a defensive measure. Yet bubble+wings currently is used a lot in BGs and Arenas and helps contribute to the feeling of being destroyed by a Retribution paladin while you are unable to respond.

My apologies to the Ret paladins who already feel picked on. We are really trying hard to not overdo anything but even the last round of pretty severe nerfs didn’t seem to do enough to Ret’s dominance of PvP.

We are also sympathetic to the notion that if Ret can’t do insane burst damage, that the spec might need other tools to be viable in PvP. We’re exploring this now, possibly though the missing 11-point Prot talent, possibly through other avenues. We’ll let you know when we’ve made a decision here.

I don’t know exactly when this change will go live, but I didn’t want you to return from trick-or-treating and be shocked that we didn’t announce it, since that seemed to cause a lot of damage with the last nerf.

I’ll leave this post unlocked for now, assuming the responses stay intelligent and we don’t get too much flaming or trolling.

Seal & Judgement Damage Reduced

We lowered Seal and Judgement damage, changed Divine Storm (earlier) and changed Hammer of Wrath. Those all should have lowered PvP burst damage, and they did.

The JotW nerf was done because a paladin could use all their buttons quickly then go on to another opponent with no down time. On bosses in PvE, they could hit every button that was up and still have mana left to be very high on healing meters. So we do think the mana regen was too generous in both PvP and PvE cases.

Source: Blizzard – Ghostcrawler

WotLK Paladin / Shaman Glyph Changes

A few glyphs changes for paladins and shamans in the most recent beta update, build 9038. I like the paladin changes, though the 100 yards on a holy light seems a bit excessive. I would not be surprised to see this reduced to a more reasonable the 30-60 yard range.

The shaman changes on the other hand are flat out horrible. 3 or 4 minutes off the elemental totems are not going to convince any shaman to take these glyphs. There really is no situation where you can say…”yes, If only I had that extra 4 minutes off the totem…” If these glyphs were buffed to a 10 minute reduction or changed from major to a minor glyph you could make a case for them, otherwise I just don’t see any way you’d choose these over other glyphs.

Paladin

• Glyph of Holy Light – Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 100 yds of the initial target. (range changed from 5 to 100 yards)
• Glyph of Flash of Light – Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% of its initial effect over 12 sec. (duration changed from 15 to 12 sec)

Shaman

• Glyph of Fire Elemental Totem – Reduces the cooldown of your Fire Elemental Totem by 4 min. (old version was 3 min)
• Glyph of Earth Elemental Totem – Reduces the cooldown of your Earth Elemental Totem by 4 min. (old version was 3 min)

WotLK Tanking Change – Major AoE Buffs

There’s been a lot of discussion recently regarding tanking, specifically how each tank in the WotLK will be able to effectively handle AoE pulls. Druids in particular are probably the worst off in this respect, but a major change to druid’s swipe ability should help quell some of these concerns.

Swipe Limit Removed – Ghostcrawler

We are going to remove the target limit on Swipe.

Swipe should not be limited by targets. This goes for Thunderclap too.

Any LK encounter really. We know the BC encounters were not designed to be tanked by any tank.

Death Knight Nerfs Incoming

The inevitable is finally going to come to pass…that’s right ladies and gentlemen, death knights are getting nerfed. /tear

We’re starting to get a lot of PvP data in, and several classes are having trouble beating rogues, Frost mages, Ret paladins and death knights.

Death knights have a lot of options at the moment, which is cool, but makes it really hard for another player to catch a break and burn a death knight down. So we’re going to try some changes. I won’t sugar-coat it — these are nerfs.

– The ghoul is doing too much damage. He is receiving 100% of death knight strength, which is much higher than most pets.
– Chains of Ice is going back to be being dispellable. It is probably the best snare in the game at the moment, for a class that already has Death Grip.
– The same is true of both Strangulate and Mind Freeze. Strangulate’s cooldown is going to go up. Mind Freeze remains the quick interrupt.
– We’re increasing the cooldown on Anti-Magic Shell. We don’t think this will hurt DKs in PvE much, and it still leaves you with Icebound Fortitude to use often.

As always, if we overdid it, if DKs are now too weak in PvP, we’ll adjust. But we were at the point where we weren’t getting a lot of good numbers because some fights were just over too quickly.

Most of these changes don’t seem all that massive, yes they are nerfs, there’s no denying that. But I don’t think these minor changes take away from the overall utility of the class. You’ve got a class that arguable has the best of everything…crowd control, snares, damage output, survivability, all wrapped up in an explosive and high armor package. Something has got to give in order to bring it in line with other classes, especially from a PvP perspective.

I’m very interested to see the finalize version of these changes on the beta. It’s been great to watch Blizzard build a class from the ground up, they really are dong a fine job assimilating such a dynamic and interesting character into the existing.

What do you think? Will death knights before crazy overpowered even after these changes? or are they brought down to the land of us mere mortals.

WotLK Retribution Paladin Guide

So I’ve lately been reading a lot how retribution paladins are going to be in wotlk, and it’s looking pretty awesome. I recently got my very own beta test key as well, so I’m able to test S3 geared retribution paladin in wotlk already…my thoughts so far? Awesome!

First, after reading of patch notes of beta and some forums I felt like we were just lacking something. We had more nuke, but no interrupt, no stuns, no mortal effect, and no slow effect. But after a bit of testing it feels like the class is balanced properly and working as intended.

In many ways the vary definition of what a ret paladin is is changing. It’s not just like a warrior copy like it’s been during Buring Crusade, but it’s actually hybrid like it was before TBC. Critical strike rating is now spellcrit and crit, that means if you have ~35% melee crit, you also have ~35% crit with spells, which is once again awesome. We also get more spellpower from talents, that means heals are much more effective than at the currently are. I’m able to get 6k healing crits with holy light really often, putting retribution paladins on about the same heal to damage scale of elemental shamans.

Additionally, since mana regen will be much better in expansion, we’re not completely out of mana after one or two holy light.

I want to be able to heal if I have mana pool, and that’s definitely what they’re aiming for. We are supporting dps, not main dps in PVP for example. The class is much more apt at performing a viable role as a support and situational DPS as opposed the main insta-gib style current retribution paladins have to assume.

Some retribution paladins may not like the way retribution is going to work in PVP but personally I think it’s a great idea. Taking hybrids back to hybrids in wotlk adds a whole new level of depth and strategy for PvP.
Below I’ve written a small guide of some of the big changes coming for paladins in wrath of the lich king.

• Blessing of Might, it’s getting a huge buff, and retribution tier 1 “BoM boosting talent” is getting buffed as well.
• Conviction, (Currently 5% melee crit), Is now boosted to 5% crit with all spells and attacks. (Melee, healing and offensive spells!)
• Eye for an Eye, now reflects 20% of damage from all critical hits you take, instead of 30% from just spell critical hits you take.
• Sheath of light, “Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 10/20/30% of your attack power and your critical healing spells heal the target for 20% of the healed amount over 12 seconds.”
• Repentance, so called combat sap now. Lasts for 1 min, 1 min cooldown, pretty awesome instance utility.
• Sanctified wrath, PALADIN EXECUTE! 50% more crit for hammer of wrath, and 1 min less cool down on Avenging wrath. Additionally adds some kind of “offensive damage reduction” effect for Avenging Wrath.
• The Art of War, haven’t been able to test this yet, but it says your hand of freedom spell has 100% chance to remove stun effect. Not sure if it means you’re immune to stun while it’s active (Which would be ultimate support in PVP), but even if it only removes stun effects when you cast it on someone, it’s huge deal. As an additional effect it also reduces the damage you take by 3%.
• Righteous vengeance, more burst, right. 25% Increased critical strike damage bonus for your judgements and this new aoe spell, Divine storm. People are complaining of this, when paladins are able to get huge crits with judgements, so I could believe they’ll nerf this or replace it with something.
• Divine storm, awesome AoE for soloing and maybe for instancing, together with concentration it’s awesome. It also heals you and your party for 20% of the amount of the total damage you’ve done, so I could imagine like 4 retri paladins + healer doing instances aoe’ing anything they need to kill. I’ve tested this and it’s really nice if you pull like +5 creatures into same spot and kill them without any problems.

Paladin PvP Guide – Holy Paladins

Welcome to read the first part of “Paladin pvp guide”. We’ll start with abilities and spells and cover additional topics with each part in this series.

Aura Swapping

Most of the paladins I’ve played against typically do not swap auras in different situations, even if it might help them a lot of. With Aura swapping you are actually changing those auras in constantly throughout the match. It is extremely important to swap these auras though. Using different auras allows you to get a huge advantage throughout the duration of the match and the better you get with using each situational buff the better off you’ll be.

Frost resistance aura – 70 frost resistance. Use it against any team where the primary source of damage is a frost mage.

Shadow resistance aura – 70 shadow resistance. Use against priest and warlock teams. This can really be a clutch buff, because one or two extra fear resists throughout a long duration match could very easily tip the tide in your favor.

Devotion aura -Devotion aura can be another very beneficial buff when used under the right circumstance. Generally speaking this aura is ideal on any team where melee damage is the primary damage output.

Blessings and seals

<Blessing of Sacrifice>
Really useful and important ability that people should use MUCH more. When to use it? I suggest to use it always against warlock teams, reducing so much of damage income to warrior. It’s really effective against rogue teams with the same reason, but they also can’t blind you, sap you or gouge you. You should always try to keep it up on your warrior against rogue and mage teams, that way you cannot be crowd controled nearly as effectivly.

Tip: You can sacrifice warlock’s pet instead of the warlock himself, that way you can keep both sacrifice and blessing of freedom up.

Tip: Keep the blessing of sacrifice up on your friend, that way you can’t get sapped, sheeped, blinded for too long.

<Blessing of Freedom>
The “Ultimate Kite” ability. This is one of the abilities that make the paladin class viable in arena. Excellent ability for pillar kiting, if you have your movement speed enchant or gem and your enemy doesn’t it’s pretty much impossible for them to catch you.

<Blessing of Protection>
Personally, this is one of my favorite paladin abilities, it’s simply dominating against melee teams. When using it with Divine shield and blessing of freedom rotating against rogue teams for example, there is really small change you could actually get killed. Blessing of protection only has 3 minutes cool down, so you’re able to BoP yourself, Divine shield after that if needed, and BoP again nearly asap after Forbearance has gone off.

Tip: Blessing of protection removes blind. If someone is about to die on the opposing team for example, and your friend gets blinded and can’t get out by himself, this is good thing to know.

<Seal of Justice and Judgement of Justice>

Judgment of justice basically kills resto druids, especially in 2s / 3s.

Unleashing this Seal’s energy will judge an enemy for 20 sec, preventing them from fleeing and limiting their movement speed.

That means that your opponent can’t run with more than 100% speed. Druids in travel form run just as fast they would run without it, or mutilate rogue who uses movement speed on talents can’t run faster than 100%. Even if the rogue uses his sprint (If it’s not improved sprint), he won’t run faster than he’d run without it. But you also need to remember that there are minor stuff that improves movement speed as well, and removing that from someone while you have it by yourself, might be dramatically.

Tip: Most of the people don’t know it’s also useful as seal. Seal of justice, has a change to stun your target on melee hit. When would you need really short stun? Interrupting warlocks or hunters while they’re recasting pet and while your partner is being cycloned and your hammer of justice is on cool down.

<Seal of Wisdom and Judgment of Wisdom>

The only use I find for seal of wisdom in arena is in heal fights against certain classes. Because it doesn’t really last that long to get benefits from it, I’d only use it in few situations. For example, if you’re playing 2v2 against healer + hunter team, judging it on pet and sealing yourself with it could save a lot of mana from you.

However, lately I’ve started to play really offensively against hunter + healer teams, so I judge seal of command on the pet every time it gets off from cooldown. (I’m currently playing with 47 / 0 / 14 holy spec with a warlock).
Other abilities

<Exorcism>

Mana cost 340, it’s a lot compared to damage it does, but sometimes you just got to go offensive and this spell is ideal for killing warlock pets. Together with Holy shock, judgment of righteous / judgment of command and hammer of wrath, it’s a lot of nuke damage. Using this technique is ideal for bombing pets, though you’ll want to make sure you pull them out of line of sight so it cannot be healed as easily.

You lose a lot of mana dropping the damage, but you’re able to drink after that so you may have to take the risk. Don’t start nuking the pet by yourself before it’s already pretty low and you’re away from opposite teams healer. If you start nuking it you’ll end up losing mana while opposite healer just heals it to full with mana cost of 300.

<Holy shock>

Your only instant healing spell, use it wisely. You can use it either offensively or defensively. If you’re playing against double dps team in 2v2 this is a spell you should have on cooldown all the time. Granted it is quite mana costly, but sometimes it’s the only way to get caught up on heals.

<Consecration>

Great way to detect stealth classes using Rank 1 and randomly casting it while mounted or even without.  It’s also a great way to kill snakes from hunter’s viper / snake trap (Correct me if the name is wrong). Don’t use highest rank when you use it, use rank 1 or few ranks higher.

Monday’s Must-See Movies

I decided to start a new segment here on ZugGaming, something that will hopefully become permanent in the weeks to come. This will be a bit where I tell you guys what WoW movies came out in the last week that are notable in some way. They can be funny, skillful, or just plain entertaining. If you have any suggestions of things I should check out, just drop a line in the comment section.

Magehancement 2100+

The first must-see movie is about two guys from Shattered Halls – US, playing a rather unorthodox comp. They are a frost mage and enhancement shaman combo playing at the 2100+ rating level. You’ll get to see them fight some of the toughest compositions while the mage carries the shaman to victory! Ok, the shaman helps out some too. While this certianly isn’t a comp you will want to choose for easy-mode shoulders, the two classes work well together with some great communication and a good sense of awareness. The video was recorded in full 1680×1050 resolution so if you download the full version it may run slowly on an older machine. However, it is worth downloading because the author puts in some helpful commentary in the bottom of the screen that may be hard to see if you don’t have the full resolution copy.

Stream or Download Now!

WotLK: The Power of Retribution

The infamous Serennia recently released a new Paladin expansion preview video, featuring some of the current class imbalances that the Retribution Paladin holds. Blue posters have kept the community settled down so far with promises of rebalancing before the expansion goes live but in it’s current state, retribution can be fun to watch. In this lengthy 33 minute video Serennia does a mix of solo and duo 5 man content while PvPing and recording some monster crits. The music isn’t bad for those who are fans of techno remixes; the second track was done personally by rogue hero and part-time DJ Isolee.

Stream or Download Now!