Strange things afoot

So Blizzard has been talking about how the new dungeons will require more single target focusing instead of just a large AOE kill everything gogogo fest.  Which, if implemented, I was looking forward to.

However, it seems as if the Paladins are getting some additional AOEs, the blood boil of the Death Knight is being reworked and now this for warriors:  Thunderstruck - Your Thunder Clap leaves a crackling zone of energy on the ground for 5 sec, dealing damage every sec to enemies that cross it.

This is also in addition to this: Blood and Thunder - When you Thunder Clap a target affected by your Rend, you have a 100% chance to affect every target with Rend.

Which means pretty much the tank tool kit just got some nice new toys in holding AOE threat.

Well color me confused.  We're getting a bunch of AOE abilities for a new non-AOE style of tanking?  What's up Bliz? 

Don't get me wrong here, adding an additional two AOE effects will make tanking on the warrior easier; that's for sure.

I'm not so sure that's a good thing.  I'm enjoying the warrior play style with having to pay pretty close attention to make sure you don't get a runner.  Additionally, having a warrior tank made the dps focus a bit more too.  It is a little easier to pull threat off of them when they're tanking groups of mobs, so if they went crazy with the AOEs they should expect to get smacked in the face a bit (by the warrior as they lie dead after the pull has ended). 

I'm a bit worried this will continue to usher in the faceroll dpsers that never really learn character control, and everything must be the fault of someone else.  I've noticed this moreso on the PVE servers than PVP (more on that to come).

Maybe that's the point of the new aoe tools though.  It gives the tank enough threat to hold the group while the rest of the party members kill of the group slowly one by one.  That would certainly explain the monstrous amount of HP tanks will have.

We'll just have to wait and find out.

Another Day, Another Paladin

Today was the 24 hour downtime for the Area 52 and Ysera servers, which meant no access to my current stable of toons.  Okay, I do have a Hunter on Stormscale, but I wasn't that interested in sitting down and figuring out which talent track to take.

So what's your friendly neighborhood Paladin to do?

Find another server and roll up a new Paladin, naturally.

(What?  I like Paladins.  Souldat likes tanks.  Your point?)

I'd tried three of the four Paladin races --Blood Elf, Draenei, and Human-- so that meant I was rolling up a Dwarf.  Besides, given the heat of mid-summer, looking at a nice frozen starting zone has its appeal.

Within five minutes of starting up and bapping wolves, somone got on Gen Chat and said, "Hey there.  My server's down."

"Imagine that," I replied.  "Same here."

I wasn't quite sure how I was going to handle having a liberal dosage of Gnomes running around, but the toons that I saw had dark hair --not pink-- and that actually makes them look halfway decent.  Still can't stand the voices, though.

One thing that I found interesting about the Dwarf/Gnome starting zone is the presence of Trolls.  Just how those Trolls ended up being detoured into the frozen mountains is beyond me --someone went a little too heavy on the mojo, mon-- but by my count that makes Trolls one of the most popular low level baddies out there, right up with Murlocs and Goblins.  I can only imagine what it would be like for a Dwarf arriving in Northrend, having fought the voodoo gang all the way since the beginning, reaching the Grizzly Hills and exclaiming "Not these idiots again!"

Anyway, there's not that much to report, since I'd have to putter around this Pally a bit before I decide what to do with him.  He'll probably end up something along the lines of my fourth string Paladin, but who knows?  Maybe I'll actually try tanking with him.

Curse Acquires MMO Champion

This is an interesting development.  Given what happened in the Alpha, I'd read speculation online that MMO Champion was handled with kid gloves by Blizz because of their affiliation with Major League Gaming.  And now, this announcement:

Curse Acquires MMO-Champion

Paladin Talent Trees - The Beta Version

I was perusing the Paladin talent trees courtesy of MMO Champion, and here are a few quick thoughts from the Ret and Holy Trees:

• The boost to INT and STR are gone.  I wonder how that's going to work out.
• Eye for an Eye indicates a chance at an automatic Judgement if someone attacks you.  I wonder if that is independent of your current CD or not.  Additionally, that means that if you have aggro and all you want is auto attack (like, say, for the Zombiefest achievement) there's a good chance that you're going to be hitting a lot harder than you intend.
• Judgements of the Wise seems to have been boosted to 1-3% of base mana.  Nice increase.
• Repentance will take longer to gain access (20 points in Ret talents = 40 levels, up from 30 points = 30 levels currently).
• Righteous Vengeance is now way early in the Ret talent tree.
• Aura Mastery is now waaaay down in the Holy Spec (20 points = 40 levels, up from 10 points = 10 levels).
• Judgements of the Pure is far up in the Holy Spec, essentially swapping places with Aura Mastery.
• Beacon of Light is also way up in the Holy Spec (only 10 points = 20 levels!), so you can fling that bacon around a lot earlier, and only taking a 6% bite out of your mana pool (as opposed to 35%).  Having it earlier in the game means that the Pally had better concentrate on INT even more heavily than before.
• There's a new healing talent, Inspired Judgement, which extends the healing of Beacon of Light from a Judgement you bring to bear to the Beacon's target. (!)  I wonder if that includes Judgements from an Eye for an Eye as well.
• Enlightened Judgements are now farther away (30 points = 60 levels as opposed to 45 points = 45 levels currently).  For those tanks who love to push the boundaries of where a Holy Spec Pally can heal, take note that the Healadin might be within range of those blasted silence spells.
• Improved Concentration Aura is now way down in the tree, reflecting when most people pick the darn thing up, I suppose.

All in all, interesting stuff.

Miscellaneous Musings

As I close in on Loremaster, I've come to the conclusion that I hate Kalimdor.

Eastern Kingdoms was a cakewalk compared to this.

True, you can use more aggressive quest assist add-ons than QuestHelper, but if the add-on is doing everything except moving your toon, then why bother?  That said, I've been tempted by the lure of easy questing.  Oh, I've been tempted.

Consider where I've been the past week or two for Kalimdor quests only:  Silithus, Moonglade, Feralas/Dire Maul, Tanaris, Dustwallow Marsh, Desolace, Felwood, Winterspring, Mulgore, Durotar/Orgrimmar, Thousand Needles, Eastern Plaguelands, Alterac, Stranglethorn, Swamp of Sorrows, and Hinterlands.  And that's for just two or three quest chains.  I know I've got The Barrens, the Blackrock instances, and various and sundry places in my future as well.

My frequent windrider miles are sure stacking up.

***

Maybe it's the state of the game right now, but I don't see that many people out questing when I'm putzing around, doing my thing.  Yes, I'm aware that a lot of people don't get up at 5 AM to get their WoW fix in, but I have been getting online in the late afternoon as well and there have been very few people out and about.  I'm starting to wonder if the LFD tool is finally pulling enough people into leveling that way rather than being out and seeing Azeroth.  I know from the standpoint of an ex-PvP server user, it's infinitely safer than being ganked in Tarren Mill.

Who knows what's going on?  Maybe the lure of that Worgen or Goblin character has some questers on the fence right now until Cataclysm drops.

***

There are times when I wish I could clone Quint and send him off to another realm and/or faction.  Yeah, I know, you miss out on the playing, yadda yadda yadda.  Seriously, though, it would be nice to be able to clone a character or be able to get people to join up for a party across servers.  With RealID, Blizz has taken the chat feature and made it non-realm specific (for better or worse), so why not do that for the LFD tool or party creation?  Of course, that makes the cash cow of switching servers go away, but still....

***

I was in an Old Kingdom run today when I was presented with a dilemma.  The tank had pulled a trash mob, but the situation was such that he couldn't pull the mob that far back without causing another group behind us to aggro.  (The position of the mobs in some of those weird angular openings in the Old Kingdom do that.)  However, if Quintalan took up his usual position opposite the tank there was a good chance that I might get a separate trash mob to aggro on me instead.  That would mean I'd have to take up position to one side of the tank, all but guaranteeing that I'd pull aggro unless I reduced myself to auto attack.  The Frostbringers and Eyes of Taladram were bringing it hard, and our caster DPS wasn't that great.

Which was the lesser evil:  take up my normal position and run the risk of having another trash mob aggro on us; stay to the side and auto-attack, hoping that the healer could handle the drawn out fight; or stay to the side and amp up the attacks, risking aggro but figuring that better I get aggro from the mob we have rather than an extra one?

(For the record, I chose the last option, and yes, I did pull aggro, but Hand of Salvation was off cooldown so I was ready.)

***

One last thought:  with Arthas now dead in Cataclysm's timeline, how is Blizz going to reconcile the Northrend questlines with the new reality?

Well hello there Arthas

Big news to share...

My guild has asked me to become an Officer, which is exciting to me for a few reasons.  I am looking forward to the challenges of raid leading and helping to deal with guild decisions.  It's nice to know your opinions will be heard and respected.  Plus, it's also great that I can now tell people to quiet down on vent with some authority (aside from the inherent cranky tank authority).

Also, we had an absolutely amazing raid night last night.  We downed the 10 man versions of Blood Princes after 3 attempts and got the Blood Queen after only two (both of which are new encounters for us).  Which means...  Lich King time!!!!

Zomg excitement.  I cannot tell you how excited I was to be experiencing the final fight in ICC.  I was beginning to fear I wouldn't see it before Cataclysm hits.  We've gotten him to about 64% ish after our fourth attempt and had to stop there for the night.

As a side note, my curiosity got the better of me, and was wondering out loud if you could just waltz up to the LK before the event started and say hello much closer.  So in charges one of our Shaman healers.  Turns out, yep.  You sure can!  It made for an awesome guild screen shot.

Boy Arthas, are you just happy to see us, or are there a pair of Death Knights in your lap? (I was told I looked like a piece of the LK's armor so I stripped nekkid in the next shot.  Luckily for you all I did not grab a pic - Oh and BTW, apparently my DK needs to get more sunlight.)

...and the theory crafters go bonkers

I'm having a grand time giggling over the fact the the theory crafters have to be going a little crazy over the news about the talent trees.

For those of you who missed it

Talent trees will have around 20 unique talents instead of today's (roughly) 30 talents, and aesthetically will look a bit more like the original World of Warcraft talent trees. The 31-point talents will generally be the same as the 51-point talents we already had planned for Cataclysm. A lot of the boring or extremely specialized talents have been removed, but we don't want to remove anything that's going to affect spell/ability rotations. We want to keep overall damage, healing, and survivability roughly the same while providing a lot of the passive bonuses for free based on your specialization choice. While leveling, you will get 1 talent point about every 2 levels (41 points total at level 85). Our goal is to alternate between gaining a new class spell or ability and gaining a talent point with each level. As another significant change, you will not be able to put points into a different talent tree until you have dedicated 31 talent points to your primary specialization. While leveling, this will be possible at 70. Picking a talent specialization should feel important. To that end, we want to make sure new players understand the significance of reaching the bottom of their specialization tree before gaining the option of spending points in the other trees. We intend to make sure dual-specialization and re-talenting function exactly as they do today so players do not feel locked into their specialization choice.

Haha, take that you number crunching basement virgins!

Of course, this just means we'll have a full analysis and a new min/max spec to take to make your character the "best" it can be.