So far from Blizzcon

I have been away this weekend and will explain all about that in a later post but I want to add some interesting notes so far from Blizzcon.

In the WoW Q&A Panel it was asked about AS trying to do to much. They said that they liked the though of having to pick roll that you want it for and glyph for that, however they did say that the interrupt part of it may get moved elsewhere.
I don't feel they quite got why its doing to much but removing the interrupt will help bring it down a bit.

They were also asked about whether Prot and Ret had to many spells. Their answer was that they believe we like having so many but if it feels like a lot of maintenance then they are not opposed to trimming a bit.
Not really an issue for me I think our amount of ability's are about at the right amount at present.

On a general WoW note they are looking at making many mounts and Titles to be account bound along with the current account bound Archeology items and guild items.
A nice change, will be good to show what you have earned outside of that one toon. Very nice if you plan to switch mains.

They wanted a kind of "closet" for cool items like tier, tabard's etc but have not had the the chance to do it yet.
I really can not wait for this, I have a lot of bank room filled at present with old gear and tabard's and would like to see that room free again.

Also they have stated that Legendarys will be available in 10man as as well as 25man.
Welcome clarification for anyone that wants to now be a 10man only guild.


In the class Q&A they eluded to the fact that Inquisition should help bring GrCr to its current position making it even more a AoE talent, however they did say number might be out so could see some changes coming.
Does not sound like they will be big though.


They have said they would like to share achievements with alts.
Same thing with the mounts and titles really, still very nice.

Sadly it seems Divine Plea is back for us. The good news is that they will be making it a "Blood Rage" for Prot making it Generate HoPo.
I like this a lot, fixes many issue we have with the solo HoPo generator, lack of burst threat and give us an emergency button in the form o somewhat on demand heal's.

Will keep an eye on the rest of the con. Also looking forward to watching 'The Raid' pre screening through live stream. If you have not heard of it go look it up now and be ready to watch.

4.0.1 and PvP

As many of you probably know by now the end of Season 8 for Arena has brought about Wrathful gear being sold regardless of previous arena standings. As a result large numbers of people including myself, have been swarming the BG's for the long grind to buy some new gear.

Not only was this a change to buy my first ever PvP Shield(and possibly the only skin of Icecrown Glacial Wall that I will get) and my first PvP Weapon since Kara, but It was a prime chance to see how well Prot was doing in PvP after the big changes.

The first and most obvious change was that as expected I could no longer burst down a healer in the space of one Avengers Shield, Hammer of Justice combo. However this was offset by the increase in AS use thanks to the shorter CD and Grand Crusader.
The other thing that is now a boost when taking on a healer is my improved healing thanks to Word of Glory, while I may not be able to always kill them I can sure outlast them and their small damage thanks to this lovely spell. This of cause lead me to redo my specs to include one all purpose tank spec, dropping EG and IJ to improve my AoE and one pure DPS spec with full points in Eternal Glory. It is wonderful just how useful that chance at a free WoG is at ether pulling me from the edge or keeping the pressure on the healer while keeping myself up.
I really am using this far more than I though I would, not just for myself but to top off other to.

The next obvious change and to me the most welcomed is the removal of Divine Plea as a crutch for our mana management. While this change was nice in PvE, to me it was a must for PvP. As a Prot Pally there was nothing worse than having DP drop of for what ever reason and be completely useless for the next 30-45 sec while you wait for the CD to drop.
Thanks to this I have only had to stop to drink in very taxing time such as having to rely on my own heals to top up before the next fight/helping to heal someone. It is truly freeing to be able to use what I need to when I need to and not worry whether DP will let me.
On the point of heals, not having DP up constantly means that if we are needed to top off a Flag Carrier or what not mid fight we can without being gimped.

As for our nerfs I quickly felt the lack of a magic dispel with Frost Mages etc becoming considerably harder to kill. Hand of Freedom helps but that CD drags out forever then you can't Crusader Strike because they are just out of melee range.
The removal of Sacred Shield is also felt alot particularly against Rogues and Locks whose DoT's would be eaten by the shield, I now take the full hit and combined with an increase in stun potential from rogues I am no longer their worst nightmare. Sure I can still blow them up particularly if I enter combat with full Holy Power but the balance has indeed shifted.

A particularly nice change that has gone quite un recorded is that when you rez in a BG you come back with full HoPo. While this is not to useful most of the time it does come in very handy when the Horde are at your GY/Base so that you can some out swinging. I have still yet to check if this only works in BG's or if it always happens on rez.


Overall I have noticed I take a lot more damage, however with WoG I can also survive a lot longer which in most cases ends up as an increase. I really cannot wait to test us out at 85 with the new Pursuit of Justice and a strong Arena team, I am confident we will be more annoying to caster and more useful to friends than ever before. My only problem now is that more than ever I feel we need a separate spec for PvP, at lease for hybrid classes.

4.0 thoughts

Its been almost a week now since 4.0.1 dropped and now that most of the bugs are ether sorted or being worked on its about time I gave my thoughts on the changes.

First thing I am sure everyone noticed is literally every addon broke, while this is not new for anyone who has been through a patch of this size it is not often that addons fail in this magnitude.
Some addons were able to be deleted out right such as our once required Pally Power. I know most people hate it mostly because we needed it but its been a part of the class so long it was a bitter sweet moment when I hit that uninstall button. I will miss the addon just not why we needed it.

Some addons have just not been updated. Most of these are addon-addons like Threat Plates and some Button Facade mods, addons that will be updated in due time. Others are like Questhelper who have seen a decline in use since Blizzard made their own copy and as such have been made redundant. The last lot are addons like XPerl whose authors for whatever reason have just not updated and have said they probably never will.

With any big patch and the work the the developers are having to do on their addons many have taken it as a time to make improvements. Because of this it is the perfect time to tweak your UI and make improvements of your own. I have put a lot of time into reworking my UI to streamline it and will post a pic of it when I am done with it. Some of the changes include; hiding my main ability bar, more use of PowerAuras including some custom made Auras and some custom editing on the Pitbull 4 LUA. This will also be the first time I have ever done anything with addons outside of their default settings.

With addons as sorted as they could be I spent most of my first day in cutting gems. I had a stock pile of about 100 different gems waiting on a bank alt and with 4.0.1 out I quickly cut them all and listed them on the AH. The gems were selling like hotcakes, some gems which I had brought for 80g pre patch were now going for 300g in the upper limits I was even able to snap up some extra gems from people still listing at he old prices and resell them for a decent profit. I got 1.5k after the first hour and over night another 8.5k, the following days have brought 1-1.5k a day as well. While the JC moeny is good Glyph money is even better, sadly I have no Inscribers but I could have done as others had and brought out glpyhs pre patch for 5-10g each and sold them for 40-100g each after. I have read of people making 30k+ in one night with Inscription.

The rest of my first day was spent fixing my spec, playing with the rotation and marveling at just how amazing the water looked. I have to say the simple work of changing the water has made a huge difference to the game. I can't wait to see how the changes to SW etc will look, I will be beautiful.


On Wednesday I finally got around to running a Heroic and testing out this new Paladin. My first one was Violet Hold and I cannot think of a better instance to test it out in. The alternation of single mobs and AoE packs in a random fashion was great for testing the two rotations and let gaps between them showed clearly how the new model was far Superior in mana management. My second run was UgK and that was a little more un organised with our mage always attacking the wrong target, we defiantly have lost a lot of threat on the targets we are not actively engaged with.
Overall I am quite liking the new rotation, its quite easy to learn an remember and its always great to see 10k+ crits poping up on your screen every few seconds. I have yet to use Word of Glory much in an instance but I am sure that will change once we enter the new Cataclysm instances.


Finally this week I jumped on my Priest and re did her talents. I must say Chakra is really fun and Holy Word:Sanctuary is awesome. I have also had a brief play as Disc on the Dummys and might have to switch to if for an instance just to play with Evangelism and Archangel a bit more. After teaching my partner the basics of the Pally rotation we hit the randoms and It is defiantly easier to heal her now that Defence is not an issue. After finding my groove again and with the ease of tank healing I found myself helping DPS far more than ever before, which leads to more desire to switch to Disc.


Over all I am really liking the changes the 4.0.1 has brought, while there are still things that need work I think this is defiantly a step in the right direction. I just can't wait for the Cataclysm and the next set of changes.

Changes are a coming

Its been a while since I posted on any of the changes to our class for 4.0.1 and Cataclysm. While there have been some rather big changes mostly its just number tweaking.
However this little nugget from GC has popped up into the epic Paladin Tanking thread currently running on the O-Board's.

While we still have grave concerns about players being able to fill every GCD, we also don't want to change paladin tanking so much that it is unrecognizable for long-term paladins. Therefore, we are going to try Crusader Strike on a 3 second cooldown for Protection only. Hammer of the Righteous will have the same cooldown. This will allow Protection to fill in almost every gap in the rotation and not be waiting so long on every cooldown, which should help the rotation feel more active. It will also allow Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous to sometimes be up at the same time. That change is pretty significant and will no doubt invite all sorts of theorycrafting on the right way to manage Holy Power. We still have additional grave concerns that once paladins can have both Inquisition and Shield of the Righteous up simultaneously that they will feel underpowered and therefore frustrated whenever they lack sufficient Holy Power for 100% uptime on both. We'll just have to see how that feels.

Its nice to see that they are at least willing to go back on their word and re work the class to make the players happy and prove to ether us or them whether this change will work or not.
The reduced gaps in our rotation is something I welcome a lot, while I am fine with having some gaps we were reaching points with very large spaces of nothing.
I now wonder whether CS will be nerfed again to compensate for the increased use or If they will find another way to balance around it.

The Great GC also postef
While we still think an off the GCD interrupt isn't an essential tool for a tank, we also don't think it's going to break anything for paladins to have one either. Our eventual solution is to let Vindication's ability to let HoJ interrupt also take HoJ off of the global cooldown. That change will require new tech, so it's not something you're likely to see anytime soon, but you can know that it's in our long term plans. Again, we don't think the interrupt issue is a critical problem that must be solved today. The rotation one in the previous paragraph is a bigger deal.
This Is a very nice little not, while It might be a while off the fact of having an interupt off the GCD even at 40sec CD is very appealing. The other up side to this is that after the class redesign they are relooking at abilitys that they said we would never have. While I wouldn't hold out on it this could mean that at some point a gap closer of some kind may still be up for consideration.

I am very happy with how the class is looking going into this expansion, with rotation holes filled and WoG useful we are looking very well off. My only wish now would be for a med length CD to generate HoPo at some rate, but that's probably something we can live without.

Look forward also to a big long awaited post coming from me in the next few days.

As the Flux Ebbs

Just a while ago blues hit us with a huge update on the current state of Prot.
Remember that while reading this they may have already changed some or all of it as it seems that our tree continues to shift.
I apologise or the inc wall of text but I feel this Is really needed all in one go.

Here is how Prot paladins are working in our current beta build. You might not see these changes in the next beta build, but in the one after that. Things are still in a high degree of flux however.

Shield of the Righteous -- Now consumes Holy Power to cause damage.

Holy Shield -- Now a passive ability that causes your Shield of the Righteous to provide 5% block per stack of Holy Power consumed. In other words, you never click Holy Shield. You just click Shield of the Righteous and buff yourself.

Hammer of the Righteous -- Now generates Holy Power but shares a cooldown with Crusader Strike. Almost all talents that affect one or the other will affect both. The intention is you use Crusader Strike -> Shield of the Righteous for single target and Hammer of the Righteous -> Shield of the Righteous for multitarget.

Avenger's Shield -- No real change, but it still hits pretty hard. Both CS and HotR can proc Grand Crusader to lower the Avenger's Shield cooldown.

Vindication -- can be caused only by Crusader Strike or Hammer of the Righteous.

Holy Wrath -- With the above changes, we think Prot paladins have enough rotational buttons to hit, so we are downplaying Holy Wrath. Holy Wrath is really intended as a Ret filler spell (for when other attacks are on cooldown). Prot could technically use Holy Wrath, but we aren't providing any talent hooks.

Consecration -- Now on a 10 sec duration with a 30 sec cooldown. The Hallowed Ground talent makes it cheaper and hit harder -- it does not affect duration. Use Consecration when you need it, but you can't spam it. This is consistent with the AE changes we are making to all tanks.

With these changes in mind, Prot will be thinking about buttons such as these:

Single Target: Judgement, Crusader Strike, Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield.
Multi-target: Judgement, Consecration, Hammer of the Righteous, Shield of the Righteous, Avenger's Shield, possibly Exorcism.

None of this includes things like Seals, Inquisition, defensive cooldowns, Word of Glory, etc.

So with Vindication off of Holy Wrath, is it intended that Prot Paladins are the only tank without an AoE Physical Damage debuff, or will similar changes be made to the Warrior/Druid/DK mechanics?
Hammer of the Righteous will be AoE enough. It hits many targets. It may not be as widespread as Demo Shout on a pull like a jillion Onyxia Whelps, but we don't really expect you to debuff pulls of that size.

Let me just clarify something - Hammer of the Righteous will generate 1 Holy Power per cast, or 1 Holy Power per target hit?

One per cast. Otherwise we think paladins might want to always be hitting multiple targets, like "Let me tank the boss and one of the adds or my Holy Power generation will be low."

Is Holy Wrath going to have the same model it currently has? As a split damage ability?
Yeah, we like the split damage because it lets Ret (and Prot if needed) use it in most situations.

Also will 3 stacks of holy power when using shield of the righteousness roughly equal the amount of threat it did before it got removed or is it changed?
It will be a hard-hitting button, especially with 3 stacks. I'd guess your highest damage ability.

So some interesting changes for us. I'm not sure I like Holy Shield being tied to SHoR. While its probably a logical step from allowing SHoR to refresh HS it almost kills HS outright, and makes it like some kind of SHoR Libram.
For the changes to AoE and how this effects us, I am liking that we have a clear idea of how our rotations are going to look in AoE situations vs single target but I really like HotR and loosing it as a spell I will use in a boss fight is sad. Also if this is an indication of whats to come then AoE is being completely gutted and I can guarantee that Warriors no longer have their "Consecration". However only being able to AoE every 30sec with the odd off rotation HW to fill in the aggro seems almost to low, maybe not for the start of the expansion but defiantly for latter when we can once again chain pull heroics.

Overall whether these changes stay or not its a very strong incite to how we can expect things to change from today. I quite like most of the changes particularly being able to use HoPo for more than just HS upkeep I just hope that HS wont be lost for good as they endeavor to tidy this current SHoR/HS system up more.

Build of Block and Shields

With the latest build there has been some reworking of the Mastery bonus's and of cause some more blue posts.
For Paladins we get;
Protection - Increases your chance to block melee attacks by 16%. Block chance increased further by mastery rating.

Where as warriors get;
Protection - Increases your chance to block by 10% and your chance to critically block by 10%. Chances increased further by mastery rating.

So while we block more often they block for larger amounts, but im not quite sure that our small extra % block makes up for their increased block and critical block. I would have expected their chance to block bonus to be a little lower but we will have to see how this goes live.

As for blue posts our friend SHoR might not be done for after all.
We'd also like to find a way to bring Shield of Righteousness back, but only if we can find an actual niche for it -- not just "here's another attack." Something like it consuming Holy Power but refreshing Holy Shield.
Im quite in favor of this idea, it lets us keep our vital HS up full time while giving us something to use HoPo on thats not directly HS. Hopefully this with the boost to HS duration will be enough to give us that breathing room we need for missed attacks or even another HoPo dump.
Also they had this to say on warriors
Currently we are looking really hard at AE damage abilities by all tanks. We tried Thunder Clap with no cooldown and didn't like it. We also tried Thunder Clap with a Consecrate-like talent, but I'm not sure we like that either. At the moment we are thinking of nerfing any of the really passive AEs, including Swipe, Death and Decay, Damage Shield and Consecrate. All of those abilities (well, maybe not Damage Shield) would still be usable, but they would be more situational.
Im quite glad that warriors are not keeping their concercration, it is our own unique spell and they have more than enough AoE with TC, SW and the new AoE Rend.
Seems that AoE is still up in the air for Cataclysm and will need alot more work before 4.0.

More Cataclysm Changes

Since my last failed post on the "new" talent tree for Paladins there has been a lot of new information coming out. I have decided to leave the full review of the new face of the class for later when things have settled down more and were not having spells and talents redesigned every few days.
I will however talk a little about my thoughts on a few of the changes and worries we have seen recently.

Firstly Ardent Defender, I'm still not sure what to make of this. While something deep inside me want me to have it, the though of waiting till 35% health even off the GCD makes me worried. We still of cause need to wait and see how it interacts with raid bosses and or 85 health pools but until then I'm looking to skip it in my builds.

Another thing that has me worried is Holy Shield, the current evolution of the spell giving us 0-15% block based on Holy Power(I have to go with the majority here to and sign the partition for the name Zeal). This seems quite low for our short CD and particularly lacking for the "Block a lot" tank class we're meant to be. On top of that it has been announced that it will be exclusive with Inquisition.

Just today the stats for our CD's have nearly been all released and now look as follows;
Divine Protection-20% for 10 Sec-1min CD-No restriction on other spells.
Ardent Defender-20% for and unknown time-3min CD-Only usable below 30% health.
Guardian of Ancient Kings-Unknown amount for unknown time-My guess is on a 10min Talented CD 30min Base-Seems a long CD for our level 85 spell particularly for those who don't spec Prot.
Divine Guardian-20% for everyone but us for 6sec-No CD given-Sad that this no longer effects us but understandable with all the other CD's we have.

While its nice that we have some more flexibility with CD's and no longer lock ourselves out of AW or Bubble by doing so it seems od that we don't have a high reduction CD anymore(baring the change that GoAK hits 50%).

The next issue GC addressed was that Paladins had 5% less Stam bonus than Warriors.

Since I am sure it will be asked based on that info, paladins and warriors have the same Stamina curves now. A naked warrior and paladin of the same race will have the same health at 85. Both Protection trees get the same amount of Stamina as a passive. That number will likely be something like 10 or 15% Stamina depending on tuning. (In our current build it is 15%.) In similar gear, their health should be very similar. We’ll provide the differences in their cool downs and how they tank. DKs and druids are likely to have different amounts of health as well.

While this sounds very good the thing concerning me it that if were all equal Warriors will top out ahead due to their "Stat Stick". That is of cause assuming that Relics stay without stats which we have had hints that they will be getting stats.

My finally concern for us is in class equality. While they are trying to make classes
balanced it seems to me that they are just staying the same distance just a little more advanced. While we get more procs and a balancing of Stam, warriors get Consecrate and a few more nice gadgets. The issue is warriors are getting more of our utility than we are of theirs. In AoE they now have Consecrate, and an AoE DoT, an instant AoE attack, cone AoE attack a cleave and a Revenge cleave. On our part we get Consecrate, and AoE attack, a HoR cleave and if you count it AS as a cleave.
That leaves even counting AS us an AoE DoT and Cone attack behind. On top of that they still have their mobility in charge/intercept and an interrupt which we only get in deep Ret tree inaccessible to Prot.
We do of cause get our own nice tricks that Warriors don't but I'm not sure they compensate for how much utility they have over us.

That's a lot of negativity out of my system now I can keep an eye on the news and look forward to the next news release.

Hints of the Furture

So the twitter Dev chat has been underway an in amoungst the usual questions they alway get asked are some interesting news for Paladins.

Q: What is the goal when re-designing the paladin class? How do you plan to change rotations, talents, etc?
A. All of the paladin specializations will make use of a new resource called Holy Power. Holy Power accumulates from using Crusader Strike, Holy Shock, and some other talents. Holy Power can be consumed to augment a variety of abilities, including:

An instant mana-free heal: Word of Glory
A buff to increase holy damage done: Inquisition
A massive physical melee attack for Retribution paladins: Templar’s Verdict
Holy Shield’s duration is now extended by Holy Power
Divine Storm’s damage is now increased by Holy Power

We also introduced several new heals for Holy Paladins including Healing Hands (an AoE heal-over-time that is applied to all players standing near the paladin), Light of Dawn (a cone heal with a 30-yard range), as well as a new heal called Divine Light, which is similar to a priest's Greater Heal, and the new instant heal mentioned above, Word of Glory.

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek at one or two of the new Retribution abilities or talents?
A. Templar’s Verdict: An instant weapon attack that causes a percentage of weapon damage. Consumes all applications of Holy Power to increase damage dealt:

1 Holy Power: 55% Weapon Damage
2 Holy Power: 125% Weapon Damage
3 Holy Power: 225% Weapon Damage

Word of Glory: Consumes all Holy Power to heal a friendly target for a specific amount per application of Holy Power (0 mana cost, 0 cooldown, instant cast).

This is certanly a huge change to Paladins and while its something that has been thrown about before its not something I have seen mensioned recently.

While we will still have to wait for the next live build before we can look at this to much, it seems like we will be getting a bucket load of new spells ablilitys and proc's based around this Holy Power mechanic. I am really not sure where I will fit so many new spells on my bars but its looking promising indeed.

One thing this does concrete in is that Holy Paladins will most likey be healing from melee range much more and taking care of the Melee DPS and Tanks while others take care of the ranged.

I can not wait to see where they take this as long as its not to complicated to manage.

The Life of Orthien

This post has been sitting at the back of the shelf ever since Richard requested it quite a while ago, and now that Honorshammer has done his post on why he choose his Paladin I feel alittle more inclined to get round to finishing mine.

As I mentioned in my first couple posts, when I first started playing WoW I had absolutely no clue what I was doing and my first character was a Tauren Shaman because a cow that could throw lightning sounded awesome. When my friend started playing he rolled Dwarf, so to play with him I made a Night Elf Warrior but immediately hated not being able to heal. Having just brought the game I tryed the free Burning Crusade trial to see what these big blue guys were like. I rolled a Paladin because I had tryed Shaman and even though I liked it wanted to try something new but I also wanted something that could still heal. Before that I had always picked middle range damage dealers with high survivability in games because often I would be terrible at them and living longer and healing if I could really let me have fun, to me Paladin sounded just that class.

So Orthien was born and away went this little Newb, swinging his mace and buying white gear from vendors. Once I hit level 10 and could use Talent Points I somehow decided that Protection was good because I could live longer still and 2 Handers were far to slow anyway. That's really how my gameplay went for the longest time, I didn't group, I didn't run instances this was really a solo game until I got to the late 40's. I reached a point where Prot wasn't cutting it all these caster mobs were killing my really easy and I started reading online for a way to make it easier. I eventually became a Shockadin and leveled as such well into Hellfire, along the way doing my first instance runs for my Charger and grinding out a Black War Elekk. It was in Scholomance that I saw my first skilled tank and he happened to be a Paladin to he was a higher level by quite a bit and wow he was impressive. I think he played a part in me wanting to become a tank, but somehow the idea of it was just there and I sadly can't remember when it started but by 60 I knew I was going to be a tank and had started reading on it.
That was when I found Gestalts Tankadin 101 guide and the Maintankadin community. Thanks to that guide and the helpful posters at Maintankadin I was tanking in Manatombs 3 levels later and have been ever since.
While I don't remember when it was that I decided I was a tank I do remember that that feeling burned inside me and that this was where my place would always be in MMORPG's, the closest I can come to describing the feeling is Love at First Sight for the role, just one of those things you know from the start.

Really everything I am in gaming today has been from a series of random events and I wouldn't have it any other way, I really can't imagine how much different this game would have been if my friend had stayed on his Tauren Hunter or If I hadn't grouped with that Prot Pally. Most of all I know I wouldn't be half the tank I am today If it wasn't for everyone at the Maintankadin forums, thank you all for really being the best forums I have ever seen.

Later I plan to talk about how I have come to end up where I am in the guild and how it to has helped shape me as a player.