Monthly Archives: October 2008

Game Info

Good news, of the flavour we all wanted.

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Ghostcrawler has posted some upcoming good news for paladins.

Righteous Defense — cooldown lowered to 8 sec. It had been 10 sec recently and is 15 sec on live.

Infusion of Light — now affects Flash of Light or Holy Light. Flash of Light is reduced to 0 cast time with 2 ranks, meaning that if you’re running around and get a Holy Shock crit, you can also Flash without stopping.

Judgements of the Pure — haste benefit now up to 15% with 5 ranks (was 10%).

Enlightened Judgements — range benefit is now 30 yards with 2 ranks (was 20). This means you can judge or heal from the same range without having to run around so much.

Bacon of Light — no change here, but I can never miss an opportunity to call it Bacon.

Let’s take a look at these:

  • Righteous Defense: this was a necessary change to stand up next to other classes’ taunts, now that they all have ranged taunt abilities.
  • Infusion of Light: this is a fantastic change, and more than I’d hoped for. It still reduces the duration of the next spell by 1.5 seconds but now applies to Flash of Light as well – meaning that after a Holy Light crit procs Infusion of Light, you get either an instant FoL or a super-fast Holy Light. This goes a hugely long way to solving our mobility problem.
  • Judgements of the Pure: well… now the haste bonus actually exceeds the GCD cost of judging, so it’s not a zero-sum equation any more. So that’s something. I remain underwhelmed by the talent, but I’ll be looking for some theorycrafted numbers to change my mind.
  • Enlightened Judgements: probably worth taking now if you’re going 51 points in, but not necessarily strong enough to warrant that in its own right.

This is probably not enough to get paladins to spec 51/x/x unless they were already leaning strongly that way anyway – however, if you did want to spec for Beacon of Light, the talents before it aren’t quite as terribad as they used to be.

And, on the positive side, Infusion of Light is now a must-have again. It remains to be seen how well Light’s Grace synergises now that Infusion of Light is the new hotness.

Uncategorized

Infusion of Light Not Finished Either

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Ghostcrawler just posted on the Paladin forums, confirming that Infusion of Light was nerfed for arena balance (which, let’s face it, we all knew anyway). She followed up with “I know it can be frustrating when a PvP concern ends up making a talent less useful for PvE. We have some ideas of what we’d like to do with it though.”

This is heartening; I just hope that however they change IoL – or the Holy Tree in general – ends up giving us some mobility back. My favourite suggestion so far is to have IoL proc an instant Flash of Light instead, or for it to reset the cooldown on Holy Shock. Either would be fine; it’s the division between “instant” and “1 second cast time” that’s the important one, not the division between “1 second cast time” and “2 second cast time”.

(Tangentially, I’d happily give away all PvP content in WoW to stop PvE stuff getting balanced around it.)

Playstyle

Post Your Bank!

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A week or so ago, Pike challenged us to post our banks, revelling in the messiness that is one’s bank.

Sailan's Bank

Click to see a larger image.

You can see why I’m looking forward to Patch 3.0.2 so much!

  • 12 soulbound non-combat pets (plus one in my inventory) will disappear into my Companions panel
  • 3 mounts (plus two in my inventory) will disappear into my Mounts panel
  • 5 stacks of tokens (Badges of Justice, and 4 types of BG Marks) will disappear into my Currency tab

Now, if only they had a tabard-storage panel…

Game Info

Inscription Changes in 9014

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Unsurprisingly, build 9014 has changed some things for Inscription yet again.

Of particular interest, a lot of the glyphs that were previously green when learnt are now orange, meaning that skilling up from 200 onwards shouldn’t be as painful or costly as my guide suggested. On the other hand, many inks have doubled in cast, so the lower levels may be more expensive.

Obviously, this sort of thing is destined to happen – if I waited til Inscription wasn’t going to change any more before posting the guide, it’d be useless because Inscription would be live.

I’ll be updating my guide and posting a new iteration of it, as soon as I’ve had a chance to re-do Inscription on the PTR. Expect it within a couple of days.

Game Info

Drama and Woe Averted in Healadin Land

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So, beta build 9014 landed on us overnight, and the paladin forums exploded in a storm of weeping – and pretty justified, too, I feel. Heck, people were upset enough that the main forum thread about it grew 16 pages overnight.

The two key changes were:

  • Infusion of Light no longer gives instant Holy Lights. Instead, it reduces cast time by 1 second.
  • Divine Plea is now confirmed to return 25% of mana, last 15 seconds, and reduce healing by 100% while active.

Infusion of Light is still nerfed – which is very disappointing, because it was the only talent that really felt fun – but Ghostcrawler has just posted that Divine Plea will be changed to a 20% healing debuff, instead of 100%, but DP will now be dispellable to compensate for it which seems like a pretty good tradeoff to me.

Somehow I managed to get the first response on the thread, but as I posted further down, I think it’s a pretty smart change.

Until now, the premiere healing spec for paladins post-3.0 has been a Holy/Ret hybrid build, 37/0/34, which goes deep enough in Holy to get Infusion of Light and deep enough in Ret to get Judgements of the Wise. This is largely because anything deeper in Holy is fairly average – the 51-point talent, Beacon of Light, is situationally groovy but not a must-have (it’s hideously expensive, and doesn’t proc off overheal), and everything between Infusion of Light and Beacon of Light ranges from ho-hum (Divine Illumination) to downright awful (Sacred Cleansing).

Making Divine Plea suddenly pretty awesome for healadins is a very smart choice. It means we’ll be regenning a decent chunk of mana in PvE every minute. Which means we don’t feel compelled to take JotW any more, because we won’t have mana woes that necessitate it. Which means we’re more likely to go deeper in Holy to take Beacon of Light (or Bacon of Light, as Ghostcrawler calls it) because JotW doesn’t look so ridiculously awesome next to it any more.

Game Info

Scribes and the Glyph Slot

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I alluded to this in my last post, but I felt I should make it clear for people who didn’t read behind the cut:

A lot of information around the net – including my own Inscription guide, currently – says that Scribes will be getting an extra Major Glyph slot that no-one else gets.

This is no longer true – at least as far as I can determine. The trainers no longer offer it as an ability, it’s been deleted from WoWhead’s WotLK subsite, and there’s been no official reference to it for a long time.

Unless it’s put back in in a late-breaking change, I think it’s fairly conclusive that the extra glyph slot for Scribes has gone the way of the dodo.

There’s a new version of the Inscription Guide, Version 1.1, available for download, updating the above information and adding a few other refinements and clarifications.

Game Info

Professional Advantages

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Note: this post contains information on Wrath of the Lich King.

So, you’re wondering what professions will serve you best at level 80? Here’s a super-quick rundown of the crafter-only advantages of each profession, to help you pick.

In addition, I’ve listed the major epic items that each profession can make, even if they’re BoE, as there’s likely to be a lucrative market in providing crafted epics.

Current as of WotLK beta build 8982.

Continue reading Professional Advantages →

Meta

In which I put on my Pimp Hat!

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I just wanted to take a moment to recommend a new blog on the scene, Hunters Rhok, by regular commenter – and much-valued guildy – Phyllixia. Phyl’s a great player and loves doing absurdly challenging things in-game, like soloing things that were never meant to be soloed. She’s a few posts in now, and her blog is turning out to be as interesting and informative as I expected. Thumbs up!