Alliance Punditry: A Response to Tenthunders

In response to a blog post concerning the views of the War by Tenthunders.

I hate to be a damper on your attempts at parity here, but you're omitting a few vital points that only seem to paint the Horde as a noble bearing, rag-tag group of misfits, when in reality, they're no different than the Horde that ravaged Stormwind back in the First War, nearly destroyed all of Outland, and almost turned Azeroth into the same barren and dead world that Draenor had become.

The Forsaken, despite all claims to the contrary, have become that which they've hated the most. The Scourge. Now that there's no Lich King to hate, they turn their sword on the living and using the same Valk'yr the Lich King used, they force the curse of undeath upon more people (many of whom are innocent and non-combatants), painting that undead streetwalker, Sylvannas, as an even bigger hypocrite than Garrosh. Why the Argent Crusade hasn't called that whore to task is beyond me.

And the orcs. Oh yes. While it was certainly unfortunate that they were suffering from a drought and famine, to assume that gives them carte blanche to waltz into Ashenvale, cut down trees to incite the Night Elves, enslave Furbolgs, desecrate the land for their war machine, murder neutral parties, is foolish and naive at best. As for the conflict, perhaps, if Thrall did have any balls instead of sitting on his hands for all those times, could have pulled the Warsong, the notoriously bellicose and bloodthirsty tribe (even before the demon blood lust). But he didn't. While certainly, there is blame on both sides, the greater blame lies upon the Orcs for stealing what was never theirs and killing the natives.

No, this isn't about survival at all.

This is all about Garrosh' balls. He can spout all the kodo turds he likes about honor and all that, but when he's waging a war to conquer all of Azeroth, even in the face of the elements raging and Deathwing running amok, he is, in fact, worse than his erring father, Grommash.

The Horde has foolishly believed they can take what they wish without paying, now, it's time for the Alliance to collect. And nothing short of either complete dissolution of the Horde or the extermination of the orcs and Forsaken will suffice.

The Paladin Theme Song

As many power ballads some would consider to be the perfect approximation of what the paladin class should be, I propose something a bit different.

Also Rohan created a blog post to describe the class anthems and figured I may as well add in my two cents on this matter.

"The Ballad of Paladin" from Have Gun Will Travel sung by Johnny Western.

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?

Paladin Tier 11 Armor Set.

Like a Rock?

Works for me.

4.0 hits.

The patch comes. Changes everything.

To date; this will be the sixth, yes, your heard me right, sixth time they have redone the paladin class since the game began. Currently, it's not looking good for ret pvp, but you know what? I'm going to do it anyway.

As per Teron Gorefield's words when you beat him...

The wheel... spins... again...

And thus, so must we.

The Current Retribution Tree (Cataclysm Build 12694)

Don't expect to see anything regarding the Holy tree, I don't give a toot about it and I blame the Holy tree for holding us back all these years. So, let's get down to brass tacks, shall we?

Zealotry - Located at the bottom of the Ret tree, it seems like a good talent, considering our incessant need for a constant source of Zeal* for our damage. But using it on the Beta, it seems a tad short for something that could be so necessary for increased damage.

Also, it reveals a flaw in the armor of the new resource system, since it's through Crusader Strike that we get our Zeal charges from. And if we want to be competitive, regardless of whether it's pvp or pve, we're going to need a steady source of it and fast.

Inquiry of Faith - Righteous Vengeance renamed. Nothing to see here, folks.

Acts of Sacrifice - Ret's version of Guardian's Favor. It seems weaker, however, than GF, since even mana cost and reduction just don't seem to even out... though, it's a miracle if Freedom actually gets to run out it's entire duration without getting spell stolen or dispelled. Needs work.

Selfless Healer - Bad. Bad. Bad! Greg Street, did you not say that a defensive DPS archetype does not work? This has all the earmarks of it. Put it in holy or get rid of it. Why not put our badly needed charge or snare there instead?

Repentance - Same as before. Needs buffing. Too weak for a talent point that deep.

Sancitifed Wrath - Improved by the fact you can use Hammer of Wrath whenever it's up. Good, but it kinda chokes our newly complicated DPS rotations and won't last long enough in pvp to matter. Needs work.

Rebuke - FINALLY! A silence that we've needed forever. Granted, it's kinda clunky to use since we need to be in melee range, but that's understandable. However, depending on how long we're going to be able to be on our targets in PvP will determine if we need it ranged instead. Good. Very good.

Seals of Command - Puts the Seal of Command cleave upon Seal of Righteousness in addition to an additional 15% damage. Kinda good, kinda meh. Still breaks CC. Needs work.

Divine Purpose - With full points, it puts 40% change to generate holy power with the other mentioned abilities. Good, but it needs more than forty percent. I'd make it a full guarantee from all those abilities so we'd have more holy power than we can use. Good, but needs work.

Communion - Old Judgments of the Wise raid effect. Nothing to see here, folks.

Art of War - More damage and crit chance. No more instant FoLs. Not as good. Needs buffs, since now our only instant heal is Word of Glory, and requires Zeal, and our survivability takes a hit. Needs work and currently inoperative on the beta.

Divine Storm - Nerfed. Now requires three charges of Zeal to hit infinite targets for 90% damage. Clunky. Needs work.

Improved Crusader Strike - Full points bring the cooldown down a whole seconds, giving us a whole 9 seconds before we can unleash a full powered Templar's Verdict. PvP's gonna be a nightmare. Needs work.

Improved Judgment - More damage. BORING! The crab has noted that we're going to like the new one when the internal builds, but what he and the paladin community considers fun are up for debate.

Conviction - Renamed Vengeance. Nothing to see here, folks.

Pursuit of Justice - Still lame. Doesn't get us to our target faster and official forum trolls, in their infinite stupidity, call this a gap closer. Lost the disarm reduction. Needs lots of work.

Eye for an Eye - Lame. Reactive damage takes too many hits to appease the whiny piss-ant Rogues. Thorns and Retribution aura were hurt because of their crying. Needs lots of work.

Rule of Law - Crossover talent for Holy paladins. Whatever.

Crusade - Crossover talent for Holy and Prot Paladins, as well as Damage increase for Ret. Mediocre. Needs work.

So, there you have it. At the present time, there's still much to be done. Here's hoping another beta build will improve things.

* = I refuse to call it Holy Power, Zeal is far better.

An epiphany.

Retribution paladins hate Armor Penetration items. Why? Because it doesn't scale well for them and it's seemingly a stat that only Feral, DKs, warriors, rogues, and hunters like.

It's why I despise items like Deathbringer's Will and more recently Zarithrian's Offering.

And here's what I realized. It is for us, as spell power plate, is to them.

Wankers.

No Starcraft II for me... yet.

I have to be quite careful for the time being whilst scouring the internets, as I am currently unemployed and I need to make sure to keep all expenditures to a minimum, which means that all Starcraft II spoilers will be funning rampant.

And you know the worst part about it is? I really, really, really, want to get that Special Edition, with Jim's Dog tags, the DVDs, the comic book, the WoW pet, and the game of course.

I can recall few, if any, bad things about the original Starcraft and I keep hearing good things about the sequel, which took twelve years to make.

Another more important reason for my forbearance is because of the recent trend in game pricing.

I've never paid sixty dollars for a full retail game and never will. The only exceptions are when there are special editions with additional junk that comes with it. And even then, they are not always worth the extra price of admission.

Well, being in part of the beta will eventually get me to write more on this blog and maybe give all two of you who come here something to read!

One can only hope.

Skipping bosses; unintentional and obnoxious.

Having used up all ten spots on my server, seven of the ten are at level cap by the way, it comes to no surprise to finding myself using the LFG tool for hopefully quick and easy runs to gear up my alts, since I don't like leaving characters at 80 with poor gear.

However, I've been noticing a disturbing trend in dungeons like Utgard Pinnacle.

For bosses such as Svala Sorrrowgrave and the stasis room, they can be easily bypassed and though I often hear the excuse that the time saved by skipping them would garner more badges that way, I remain doubtful. That goes double for you if you're a DPS class with no healing/tanking alternative.

Frankly, I find it rather frustrating, just hitting 80 and hoping to get some use out of the LFG tool, only to find bosses with loot you could potentially use because other members of the group are already decked out t9/10 and don't have the patience or understanding to remember that were once like me at one point.

As easy as it is to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the players, it's far easier to put the responsibility of this on Blizzard's part, on account that they made the instance in the first place.

Did they made it so that they could be skipped intentionally? I doubt it. But then again, they intentionally left certain classes with only the choice they had for raiding was heal or don't raid. So, as easy as it is for me to resort to my biases to make the developers sound as incompetent as possible, I am going to have to left them go on this one. Since you don't exactly make content that players should miss, even if you've done it countless times for an item that doesn't want to drop for you.

From Slacker to Work Horse.

Remember this guy?

Before we get to meat of this post, let's join Peabody and Sherman and ride the WABAC machine back to Vanilla wow.

Back then, during the less than Ret favorable days, it would auto crit for double damage when the target was stunned. If a ret paladin was fortunate enough to get the Field Marshall's Aegis, he could do some serious damage as either Ret or Protection... provided it was the famous tri-spec build you used previous to 1.9.

It also had a serious drawback. Considering the wording of the original seal state that it had "a chance" to deal additional damage, it was given the moniker "Seal of Casino". If one was fortunate, one could hit targets for massive damage. If not, you'll get a white swing and nothing more until it was judged and the seal reapplied for another attempt.

Fast forward to Lich King Times, where, after the removal of Seal of the Martyr and changing Seal of Vengeance to work on auto-attack swings only, the developers hoped that by making Seal of Command actually hit with every swing, we would choose that and still have a chance at pvp.

Nice idea, but the damage had been utterly gutted and hit like a wet noodle by this point in time, by several nerfs between Vanilla and now, and any ret paladin worth their salt would have to use Seal of Righteousness if they wanted to make any headway, considering they still had no snare, interrupt, or means to deal with casters (but that's for another time).

In a stroke of genius, or madness (take your pick), the developers decided to turn the seal into a cleave.

The damage by itself was nothing special, but the fact that it automatically hit three targets at once, when used in conjunction for both Hammer of the Righteous and Divine Storm*, resulted in much more AoE damage for Rets and Threat for Prots.

*Though Divine Storm will proc the seal on the attack itself, it won't proc the cleave, so, you're not hitting as many targets as we would have hoped.

As an example; for ret, let's take my current weapon Shadow's Edge without the two Bold Dragon's Eyes and enchant it with Berserking I have on it.

Here's the math:

Without all that stuff added on, it will do somewhere within the range of 313.92 - 471.24 damage per second. And it will hit four targets when used with Divine Storm. Add in the 2 piece t10 proc and you got lots of AoE damage going around... when it procs, of course.


Now, take all that and multiply it by three (four if you use the glyph) for Hammer of the Righteous, add in the amount of threat you get from Righteous Fury and you got pretty much the best AoE tanking seal in the game at present.

As a side note, it would have been nice to acquire Seals of the Pure for extra damage and threat when tanking, but it doesn't affect command, so, it's left to its lonesome.

So, there you go. Seal of Command. From Slacker to Booster, thanks ! (Fast forward to 10:08).