Monthly Archives: February 2009

Game Info

Against Your Better Judgement: A Guide to Judging

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Judgements: they’re not just for Retribution paladins any more.

There’s a fair amount of misinformation and misunderstanding floating around when it comes to paladin Judgements, and the issue of “who should Judge? when? why?” is something I’ve seen come up in discussion in a number of places recently, so: here’s a guide. First up is the primer; if you know the basics, skip to the end for the last three sections.

Three Key Facts

  1. You have to have a Seal spell currently active before you can cast a Judgement.
  2. There are three Judgement spell options, which share the same cooldown: Judgement of Light, Judgement of Wisdom and Judgement of Justice.
  3. Using a Judgement spell has three effects: damage, a debuff on the target, and a buff to you (and possibly others).

Damage

Casting a Judgement on a mob causes some amount of direct damage to it. This varies depending on which Seal you have active:

The damage from Judging each seal scales differently with talents and stats; going into detail is outside the scope of this guide.

Debuffing the Target

The Judgement spells all apply a different debuff to the target. You generally can’t stack more than one debuff of each type on a single target, regardless of how many paladins are judging – this has not always been the case, but that’s usually due to bugs. Each debuff lasts 20 seconds, so a paladin will need to keep re-judging to keep the debuff up.

Judgement of Light applies a debuff to the target which has a chance to restore health to anyone who hits the target. This healing is attributed to the paladin who applied the judgement, and confers zero threat.

The amount of healing it gives scales with the gear of the judging paladin; the amount is calculated by (0.18 * AP) + (0.18 * SP). Therefore, if you’re fighting with multiple paladins, this should be applied by the people with the highest combined attack power and spellpower.

Judgement of Wisdom applies a debuff to the target which has a chance to restore mana to anyone who hits the target. This is a flat amount; 2% of the attacker’s base mana, so it doesn’t scale with the paladin’s gear, the attacker’s gear, or anyone else’s.

Judgement of Justice applies a debuff that stops the target from fleeing, and restricts their movement speed.

Used against mobs, this spell will stop them from running away at low health if they would normally do that. Used against players, this spell restricts people to 100% speed – ie, standard running speed. It nullifies speed increases from mounts, gear (ie enchants and gems), skills (like Dash/Sprint) or talents (like Pursuit of Justice or Unholy Aura). PvP trinkets will remove this effect, but druid shapeshifting won’t – for obvious reasons, this is a popular judgement in PvP, especially in arenas.

Buffing You

Each paladin talent tree has a talent that synergises with the use of your Judgement spells; the effects of these are very different, depending on your spec, but all are useful.

Holy paladins have the Judgements of the Pure talent, which increases their Haste by 15% for one minute after using a Judgement. This is very useful for healing; you only need to judge once a minute to keep this buff up, and the Haste can make a big difference in your healing output.

Protection paladins have the Judgements of the Just talent, which is technically a further debuff to the Judgement target: it reduces the target’s melee attack speed by 20%. This is a huge bonus when fighting opponents that do a lot of physical damage (like, say, most raid bosses); it’s a lot of incoming damage that the tank no longer has to soak or avoid, a lot of damage that the healers no longer have to heal.

Retribution paladins have the Judgements of the Wise talent, which restores 15% of their base mana immediately, and grants the Replenishment mana restoration buff to the raid. This talent makes Retribution paladins very useful to most raid groups.

(In addition, Retribution paladins and many Holy paladins also have the Heart of the Crusader talent, which applies an extra debuff to the target giving all attacks against it an extra 3% critical strike chance.)

So Who Judges What?

Paladins are pretty popular these days, which means many (I dare say most) raid groups will have more than one – which means you should be sharing the Judgement duties around, or else people are going to overwrite each other and waste useful abilities.

Judgement of Light is currently more useful than Judgement of Wisdom, because mana isn’t a problem for most people in current content. That may change – is likely to, in fact – in Ulduar, so raid groups in the future will need to revisit this issue. But for now, if you’ve only got one paladin, Judgement of Light is more useful than Judgement of Wisdom. And Judgement of Justice is useful only for the sake of triggering your talents; the debuff it confers doesn’t do anything useful.

So, in current content: Light > Wisdom > Justice.

Who judges which?

  • Judgement of Light scales equally with Spellpower and Attack Power. Ret paladins should be applying this if they’re present, as a Retribution Paladin’s AP + SP total will be higher than that of other specs. Protection paladins are next on the list; Holy paladins should only be applying this if there are no other paladin specs in the raid.
  • If there is a Protection paladin in the raid, they should not have their judgements overwritten, except by another Prot paladin – this is important, in order to keep Judgements of the Just active.
  • Holy paladins can apply whatever Judgement isn’t already claimed by another spec, as they only need to judge once a minute for Judgements of the Pure; their judgement doesn’t have to stay up.

This all leads to:

The Bottom Line

If your raid has:

  • Ret, Prot and Holy: Ret on Judgement of Light, Prot on Judgement of Wisdom, Holy on Judgement of Justice.
  • Ret and Prot: Ret on Judgement of Light, Prot on Judgement of Wisdom.
  • Ret and Holy: Ret on Judgement of Light, Holy on Judgement of Wisdom.
  • Prot and Holy: Prot on Judgement of Light, Holy on Judgement of Wisdom.
  • If all your group’s paladins are of the same spec, it doesn’t really matter who judges what. The best-geared paladin should judge Light, as it scales with gear, but it doesn’t really matter.

… But What About The Meters?!

There are holy paladins out there who will claim they should be judging Light so they get credit for all that healing done on the meters. There are raid leaders out there who look at healing meters and get angry if the Retribution paladin is nearly outhealing the Holy paladin.

To both of you, I say: fie on you! Healing is not a competition; the raid group is a team. Do you really want to give bad assignments that waste peoples’ potential, just so the meters look “right”?

If you’re that concerned about the meters, log the raid with WoW Webstats (aka WWS), look at the report afterwards, and ignore the amounts for Judgement of Light. Don’t let Meter Worry (or Meter Pride) goad you into encouraging the use of inappropriate Judgements, when in the right hands Judgements are powerful tools for your raid.

Game Info, Media

Hodir testing on the PTR, with video

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Herein, a first look at Hodir, one of the bosses of Ulduar!

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to try this with my guild, as the limited testing times are restricted to American and European prime-time hours, so I had a chat to my esteemed blogging colleague Matt, of World of Matticus, and mentioned that I’d love to help test Ulduar on the PTR with him.

Edit: Check out Matt’s rundown of the experience!

Well, Matt set up <Years Behind> on Broxigar, and – apart from constant world server failures, lag, UI problems and all the other symptoms of a test server – away we went!

Here’s a video of one attempt; sadly we didn’t get much testing time, as we spent an hour or so fighting constant disconnects and insane lag, but it was enough to get an idea of the encounter and what’s involved.

(You can view the video here on YouTube for a higher-quality copy; I’ll replace this with a better link and embed once I’ve sorted out better video hosting.)

Game Info

3.1 Paladin Info: New Glyphs and New Gear!

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The deluge of information from the 3.1 PTR has begun!

Paladin Glyph Changes and Additions

  • Glyph of Exorcism — Increases damage done by Exorcism by 20%. (Old: Your Exorcism also interrupts spellcasting for 2 sec.)
  • Glyph of Divinity — Your Lay on Hands grants twice as much mana as normal and also grants you as much mana as it grants your target. (Old: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.)
  • Glyph of Lay on Hands — Reduces the cooldown of your Lay on Hands spell by 5 min.(Old: Increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%)
  • Glyph of Beacon of Light *new* — Increases the duration of Beacon of Light by 30 sec.
  • Glyph of Hammer of the Righteous *new* — Your Hammer of the Righteous hits 1 additional target.
  • Glyph of Divine Storm *new* — Your Divine Storm now heals for an additional 15% of the damage it causes.
  • Glyph of Shield of Righteousness *new* — Reduces the mana cost of Shield of Righteousness by 1 to 6%.
  • Glyph of Divine Plea *new* — While Divine Plea is active, you take 3% reduced damage from all sources.
  • Glyph of Holy Shock *new* — Reduces the cooldown of Holy Shock by 1 sec.
  • Glyph of Hand of Salvation *new* — When you cast Hand of Salvation on yourself, it also reduces damage taken by 20%.

There are some mighty interesting glyphs there. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to run with, personally; I’ll wait to make any decisions until a) it’s closer to release, and b) I see what Ulduar’s like. Still, some food for thought here! (I particularly like the buff to the Lay on Hands glyphs; they’ll make a great one-two punch as a Minor/Major combo.)

New Craftable Gear

Blacksmithing offers:

  • the Plate Girdle of Righteousness (49 Stam, 62 Int, 81 spellpower, 40 haste, 22 mp5, red & blue sockets with a +7 spellpower socket bonus)
  • the Treads of Destiny (73 Stam, 62 Int, 81 spellpower, 49 haste, 19 m5, red & blue sockets with a +7 spellpower socket bonus)

I need to do more than hasty napkin math, but these items look to be to be inferior to what I consider current best-in-slot – Waistguard of Divine Grace and Poignant Sabatons, both from Naxx-25, so I wouldn’t bother saving mats for them if you’re doing 25-man raids.

OMG Legendary!

For the first time ever, it looks like there’s a legendary that’s usable by – and of interest to – us healing paladins!

The Fragments of Val’anyr are like the old shards of Atiesh from level 60 Naxxramas; gather 40 to form the weapon.

Needless to say, this is going to be heavily sought-after, I imagine.

Game Info

3.1 Patch Notes: Respec Time!

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The 3.1 patch notes are out, and you can read them here on MMO-Champion. I’m not going to reprint them in their entirety, but! There are a couple of things of interest to holy paladins in particular.

Paladin

  • Auras will now persist through death.
  • Blessing of Kings is now trainable at level 20. Removed from talent trees.
  • Talents
    • Protection

      • New Talent Divinity:Tier 1 protection talent, increases healing done by and to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
      • Sacred Duty (Protection) rank 1 now increases Stamina by 4%.
    • Retribution
      • Benediction (Retribution) now affects Hand of Reckoning.
      • Fanaticism reduced to 3 ranks for 6/12/18% bonus and 10/20/30% threat reduction.
      • Repentance no longer resets the Paladin’s melee swing timer.
      • Righteous Vengeance reduced to 3 ranks for 10/20/30%.

Well, isn’t that interesting? That Tier 1 talent, Divinity, looks like a must-have for holy paladins – why wouldn’t you want an extra 5% healing done? For paladins who’d previously taken Kings, it’s an easy switch – for the rest of us, it means giving up a delicious 3% crit from the Retribution tree. Goodbye, Sanctified Seals – I’ll miss you!

Also of particular interest to Holy paladins:

  • Glyph of Holy Light: Can no longer crit and has had its range updated.

Obviously, it’s early days yet, and this is all subject to change anyway; I will, of course, keep you all informed.

Uncategorized

Argent Tournament: New World Event in 3.1

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There’s not much news about it yet, but there will be a new world event during the early days of patch 3.1.

This blue post has the details:

In patch 3.1, a new world event titled “The Argent Tournament” will be coming to Northrend! This tournament will be live on the 3.1 PTR and open for testing, though certain aspects are still in development. Players will find a host of new features here, including:

  • The ability to prove your worth to a capital city of your choosing through our new mounted combat system (still in development)
  • New daily quests to construct the great Argent Crusade coliseum for glorious battles to come
  • All new rewards – new items, titles, banners, tabards, pets, mounts, and more
  • All new achievements
  • Many more festivities, and more to come in future content updates!

Players will find the Argent Tournament in Icecrown. Speaking to any Northrend flight master will get you on track to prove your worth to the Argent Crusade, your faction’s leaders, and all denizens of Azeroth!

I’m not sure, from this, whether they actually mean World Event (a la the Shattered Sun takeover of the Isle of Quel’Danas) or Seasonal Event (a la the Darkmoon Faire). Either way, it does sound like fun, and I’m looking forward to it.

I am, however, a trifle disappointed that it’s focusing around the Argent Crusade; I’d have hoped for a new faction or sub-faction (perhaps the Brotherhood of the Light, who previously acted as the diplomats between the Argent Dawn and the Scarlet Crusade) since increasing reputation in WotLK is so easy.

Update: Having thought about it a bit more, I suspect 3.1 will have the world event introducing the Tournament and building the coliseum, and future patches will actually put the coliseum to greater use.

However I must admit: I think it’s a bit weird for the Argent Crusade to be building arenas and having tournaments; isn’t that something of a distraction from the business of fighting a war? It seems rather out of character for them, I feel.

Off Topic

Recruitment: Looking For A Few Good Men

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…and women, and – if strictly necessary – gnomes.

My guild, Southern Wardens of US-Proudmoore, is currently recruiting raiders for 25-man content. We’ve cleared Naxxramas, we’ve done Sartharion +1 Drake, and we’ve got Malygos on the ropes at the moment.

We’re currently looking for DPS players – more ranged DPS than melee, and we’re particularly interested in boomkin/mages/shadow priests, but we’re happy to consider all applications.

About Us

We’re an Australian guild and we raid during Australian times, although we welcome people from other time zones if your schedule permits it. We started our 25-man raiding in mid-January; we’re currently building our raiding force to finish off Malygos, work on Achievement progression, and prepare for the launch of Ulduar.

We’re not hardcore, but we are progression oriented, and we have traditionally been placed in the top 15-25% of raiding guilds on Proudmoore. We make an effort to be as flexible as possible for individual players, and we ask players to be flexible for us in return.

About the Server

Proudmoore is a US PvE server with a very high Australian/Oceanic population, meaning that our peak playtimes are spread throughout the day. It’s one of the original launch servers, operates on PST, and is in the Bloodlust battlegroup. As an old server, it has a solid population base, a very active raiding community and a mature server economy. If you transfer in from outside, and find that we’re not to your liking, there are a number of other active Australian raiding guilds so you won’t be stuck in a dead end.

If You’re Interested

Check out the full recruitment post here on our guild blog, and drop me a line here, or via email at siha [at] southernwardens dot com, or in-game.

Playstyle

A Teeny Weeny Blizzard Slip-Up

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On the whole, Blizzard’s done a pretty good job of normalizing the various crafting professions and their products in Wrath of the Lich King, although a couple of professions (tailoring and enchanting) arguably need a bit more love.

They even made sure you could skill up cooking without having to fish as well. Almost all the useful buff food recipes have four variants: a greater and a lesser food made with meat, and a greater and a lesser food made with fish. Look at Haste buff food as an example.

40 Haste Rating & 40 Stamina: Imperial Manta Steak, Very Burnt Worg
30 Haste Rating & 40 Stamina: Baked Manta Ray, Roasted Worg

This pattern continues all through the buff foods, pretty much, until you get to… Strength. Now, bear in mind that Strength is arguably the single most useful offensive stat for warriors, death knights, and any paladin who’s not Holy – so you have a lot of people looking for +Str buff food.

And yet, there’s exactly one strength buff food: Dragonfin Filet, for 40 Strength and 40 Stamina. No cheap-ass food for economy use; no meat-based version for the non-fisherfolk out there.

And just to compound the issue, compared with other in-demand fish, the locations for fishing up this tasty treat are sadly limited. Which means on a busy server like mine, competition for the few pool spawns active at any one time can get really savage.

Prediction: 3.1 will include three new Strength food recipes – a +30 Strength food made with Dragonfin Angelfish, and +40 and +30 Strength recipes using meat.

(This post brought to you by me doing laps up and down Dragonspine Tributary for an hour this morning.)

Media, Off Topic

Meme: Sixth of the Sixth

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I was tagged by Bellwether and Spicytuna for this – help, peer pressure! The challenge was originally issued by Maiara of Voodoo Ventures: open up your screenshots folder and post the sixth screenshot in the sixth folder.

So, here it is! Click to see a bigger image.

Preparing for a raid in SWG...

OH WAIT. Did I forget to mention that my MMO Screenshots folder is a higgledy-piggledy jungle of shots from Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest II, Lord of the Rings Online and four years of WoW? …Yeah.

So, this is from July 2004. It’s my guild in its earliest iteration, preparing for a raid in Star Wars Galaxies – I’m the one in white armor on the right, as you can tell from the nametags if you squint. There are people in that raid I still raid with today, many games later. Long live the Wardens.

(And man, it may have been flawed and buggy, but I still miss SWG like you wouldn’t believe.)

But! Blast from the past aside, I tried to filter out all the non-WoW stuff, and I came up with this:

The sixth shot...

This is from the camera flyby in the Blood Elf racial intro. When The Burning Crusade launched, I found the Blood Elf starting zone so gorgeous that I rolled blood elf after blood elf, just to watch the character introduction. I’ve played my way through that starter zone five times now. (And I’ve still never managed to get a Horde character to level 30. If the rest of the Horde world looked that good, I might.)

I tag… Josh of Eye For An Eye, Elleiras of Fel Fire (let’s hope she reads this!), Seri and Jov of World of Snarkcraft, Phyllixia of Hunters Rhok, and Gryphonheart of The Lion Guard. Oh, and Queklain aka Mr. Stoppable Force. Let’s see what you all have lurking in your screenshot folders!

And, since I was poking around in my screenshots folder anyway, have a bonus wallpaper!

Sunstrider Isle

Click to view the large version, right-click to download the linked file. It’s a 1680×1050 widescreen jpeg, 560 KB.

This is my single favourite screenshot and view of my entire WoW history. It’s just glorious.

Playstyle

Poll: What Kind of PvE Do You Prefer?

25 Comments

Whenever I read people talking about their progress in 10-man raiding, my immediate response is to hope they can get into 25-mans soon for their sakes. I know that’s completely irrational of me; a number of 10-man encounters are more challenging than their 25-man counterparts, and plenty of people are happier in the smaller raid sizes, fo various reasons. I sincerely believe 10-man raids are just as real and valid as 25s.

But! I prefer 25s, and it’s so hard not to project this when I’m thinking about what other people want out of the game.

So please educate me, gentle readers – everything else being equal, what kind of PvE content do you prefer?

[poll=15]