Project Lore

So I’m sure many of you have heard, the Paladin heyday is over. We are getting hit with the Nerf Bat… and HARD. Being the token Project Lore Paladin, I thought I should weigh in on this. First of all I should clarify this nerf is aimed mostly at Retribution. Ret was buffed beyond belief in 3.0.2, and I will admit, probably to a fault. The most obvious overbalance being in PVP. I have heard tales of retadins taking out 4-5 opposing players at a time, bubbling, taking out a few more, laying on hands, and going back again. They have been accused of being unkillable and dealing way too much damage. I’m not going to argue that things are right, in fact I’ll agree that they are very wrong. I must say this whole ordeal as been hard to take as a Paladin. In WoW you grow a certain attachment to the class you play, it becomes part of your identity, and I can’t help but take a lot of the recent criticism a bit personally. There has been massive QQ over what pallies can do. It has gotten to a point that other players are getting angry over it. People are accusing us of being “cheap” or being “cheaters.” This is way out of bounds for me. We are playing our class! We didn’t hack the game to get over powered, it just happened! Sure, I know lots of us have been making the most of it, but I don’t think we are doing anything wrong. Regardless it seems that the chaos is coming to an end. Looking over the list that our good friend Ghostcrawler posted, there are quite a few changes coming down the pipeline. Some of which have already been hotfixed into the game, and a few more that are going to hit in upcoming patches. While I understand this is all part of the class balancing act, I do have a concern, namely the 20% damage nerf to seals and judgments. Consider me a bit selfish, but I can't help but worry that the nerfs to ret are spilling over into the other trees. The Judgment/seal nerf will affect my threat as a tank, no doubt about it. Given, Blizzard acknowledges it, but I think they need to find a way to prevent it, not say they will look into if there is a big problem. They have stated they are very happy with the way Prot has shaped up, so why mess with the formula to teach another spec a lesson? In the end reading over patch notes gives us a very poor idea of how the game play will actually shape up. We are just going to have to wait until we can play these changes to know if they have done too much, not enough, or got it right. All I know is that I will be paying very close attention.

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Now that the new patch is alive and kicking, my guild has decided to get back to raiding. Finally! This is great news, but things seem, well, different. I know Blizzard went ahead and reduced mob’s health by 30% for the new patch, and I also know that all of the classes have been buffed a bit with their new abilities. What I wasn’t quite ready for was the net result of all of this. All of the raid content is now ridiculously easy. This has been an extreme nerf, way more so than I had expected. Perhaps it was just the new class abilities are just much more powerful than it seems, or maybe 30% is just way more than I was able to visualize. Either way, wow. In the last two days alone we have had groups go through Kara in half (literally) the time it used to take, we have earned a few guild firsts, and we have taken groups of people who have never raided before into 25-mans with ease. It’s all quite overwhelming. Even heroics have changed significantly. About two pulls into my first heroic since the patch (Ramps), my group quickly went from strategic marking and pulling to just grabbing 14 mobs at a time and AOEing everything down. CC has been rendered completely useless. These made many of us reconsider our activities for the next few weeks. We now have the opportunity to see content that we never thought we would be able to see. Of course we will go down those bosses that always gave us trouble (Vashj I’m looking at you), but after that I think we will be able to press on into content we have never even seen. I even heard about a trade channel PUG that cleared most of Black Temple, surely we can do the same! As fun as this is, I can’t help but think this massively devalues these encounters. Sure we may get guild firsts, but do they count? No way. I no longer get a since of pride from downing a boss, it’s just an achievement/gear run for me now. It’s kind of sad. But then again, I don’t think anyone is really kidding themselves. All in all I think I am just going to take it as it is. I will enjoy the easy achievements, see some new things, gear up my alt, and continue to wait for new (non-nerfed) content in Wrath!

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So as many of you know, the patching process didn't exactly go smoothly for Blizzard. There were delays, installation issues, server issues, add-on issues, and for the fortunate few (like myself) you lost all your vanity pets and mounts. Yes... I know to look in the character screen, those babies are gone. Apparently it's a "display issue" That's not what I want to talk about, however. Once I plowed through all the speed bumps, things were actually pretty fun! I logged on with tons of new stuff to do and things to get excited about. While learning new mechanics has been a bit of a process, man, is it fun to see what my characters can do! My Paladin is pumping out more damage than I ever thought possible, and I have to say Hammer of Righteousness is about the coolest thing I have cast in a long time. Not only is it a great AoE, but I just love that sound it makes! (I know,  but you have to appreciate the small things). There were a few unexpected surprises as well. Once I got all trained up and got my hair cut, I started on a project I hadn't even considered before the patch dropped. I hit the AH and started buying up some glyphs to buff up my spellbook. Once I figured out where the Lexicon of Power was, I had a bunch of little enhancements to play with! Finally, I have to say, I just love the new achievements and titles. Allow myself to introduce you to Bastosa Jenkins (or is it Steve Marcus Bastosa Jenkins now?). On a serious note,  it has been a great excuse to check out some old content, and explore some of the secluded places in Azeroth I have never made it to. While I didn't get credit for everything I have done thus far, I think I am really going to enjoy going back and crossing all those old bosses off the achievement list. If this is a taste of what Wrath is going to be like, I am even more excited. Blizzard has done away with boredom of the downtime, and has given us all something fun to experience. Now if I could only get my epic flyer back...

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The moment of truth is about to arrive. As many of you noticed the second part of the patch has already began hitting our hard drives, and it's widely believed that Tuesday marks the release of 3.0.2. I am incredibly excited, but at the same time I am bracing myself for a bit of an awkward phase, and a somewhat rough transition. Things are about to change, and change a lot. I was not lucky enough to get a beta key, so in order to prepare I have been forced to spend my days reading blogs, websites, and patch notes to figure out what they are doing to my class. It seems like most classes have some pretty major changes coming, but some are bigger than others. Of course where I have been paying the most attention is my Paladin. To state things simply, they changed everything. From what I can tell, they changed the basic mechanics of the way the class operates. Our seal-judge-reseal way of life is gone. Now we have persistent seals and judgments that are not tied to the active seal. Not only that, but we have an entire new list of spells that seem to replace a big part of my tanking threat rotation. Seeing all this will be incredibly fun, but I can't help but feel I will be starting at square one. I will have to relearn how to play my class entirely. I admit that I get in a bit of a rut pulling with avengers shield, doing my standard judgments, and spamming holy shield. Now I have spells like Shield of Righteousness, Seal of the Martyr, and a whole mess of "hand" spells that will all find a good home on my hot bar. It is going to take some time to figure out my new seal and judgment rotation. We no longer have one Judgment, but three. While sealing and judging won't take up as much of my time, I feel it will still be important to manage seals and the debuffs we are placing on mobs very carefully. I imagine my rotation before and after the patch won't look anything alike. It's a bit of a frightening prospect. Luckily we have this 4 week window to romp through old content so we can focus on new abilities, and not have to worry about learning the instances. With any luck I will have all this mastered by the time Wrath drops. How about your class? Is this going to be an easy transition, or are you going back to the drawing board with me?

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Oh sweet jumping Jesus.  Patch 3.0.2 is apparently creeping up on us sooner than I expected.  Blizzard Poster Zarhym announces that the bridging patch is going to be a large one.  Not that we expected anything less, considering the size of the pre-TBC “Before the Storm” patch.  I already touched on some changes that were announced when the patch was first revealed but the news of the impending download calls for an update. For starters, Zarhym warns us that this patch will be big.  So big that the flying skull wants all users to activate their Background Downloader to prepare to download the data that has been finalized.  It is also mentioned that the downloader should be downloading faster in general now.  Seems that they tweaked their torrent system a bit. The process should be enabled shortly. Even though we received the warning, Blizzard has still not added any patch notes to their site.  It's likely we will see some patch notes this week to elaborate on all the known changes. We also have some anecdotal evidence to hint at how soon the patch may be coming.  First off, the PTR forums have been wiped, which usually occurs before a patch heads to them.  I should mention that much of the new stuff has been tested on the beta realms extensively, meaning a PTR session could theoretically be skipped.  Secondly, the Launcher is now displaying a Wrath of the Lich King splashscreen.  Nothing groundbreaking or concrete, but evidence nonetheless. Here is some of the stuff we already know is coming with the new patch:

• Massive alterations to the way raid buffs/debuffs work
• A built in Guild Calendar
• New class spells and talents
• Stormwind Harbor
• Barbershops
• Two new Arenas
• Inscription profession
• Hunter pet changes and additions
• Zul'Aman bears no longer awarded

Get to work on those bear mounts guys.  I will be content with waiting for a Polar Bear though.

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Some more details have been coming out about the pre-Wrath of the Lich King content patch. As you know, the upcoming patch will act as a “bridging” patch. What this means is that Blizzard will use patch 3.0.2 to introduce a chunk of the Wrath changes, before Wrath is launched. This is the same thing Blizzard did with patch 2.0.1, introducing some aspects of The Burning Crusade into vanilla World of Warcraft. That addition came just a little over a month before TBC's release. Eyonix mentioned as part of patch 3.0.2's announcement that the notes would be coming shortly. However they still have not been posted. Nevertheless, Blizzard has posted additional information through alternative means. First we have a promise from Bornakk that the game won't be broken by the patch. I still remember the horror of “Assault on Blackwing Lair” or patch 1.6.0. I never wanted to use add-ons again after how long it took for all of my add-ons to be repaired, and then the time it took to go find them.  One by one.  Thankfully, we have tools like BLASC now. Bornakk also mentions that the patch should arrive “in the coming weeks”. To back up that statement the PTR forums have been wiped. An act that always happens shortly before a new patch is tested. Zarhym brought us the first list of detailed changes yesterday, the long promised changes to raid buffs/debuffs and stacking. The changes are drastic and the post is long, so it is worth the read for the hardcore PvE players out there. The Summation:

• Most buffs/debuffs will be raid-wide (ie Warrior shouts, Shaman totems).
• All buffs are categorized in one or more of 30 categories. Most categories have only a few buffs in them.
• Buffs from the same categories will not stack, with the most powerful buff taking precedence
• Mana regeneration buffs to be assigned to 10 players with the least mana
• Numerous existing buffs and debuffs have been reworked for the new system

Blizzard hopes that the changes will allow raiders to bring whomever is available to a raid – within reason - instead of requiring a concrete template be filled. Zarhym noted that Blizzard will be fine tuning the system and changes as needed based on internal testing and community feedback. So start the feedback process.

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