Protection

• Divine Protection: Cooldown reduced to 3 min.

The current CD is 5 minutes! This can be talented down to (2 points in Sacred Duty) 4 minutes but down to 3 and I’m assuming talented, it will be down to two minutes? That’s a HUGE change and very welcome!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.1, buff, pally

A few nights ago, I set a personal best, in Heroic Utgarde Keep with 1776 dps, as a tank.

Then last night, UK was the heroic daily again! So I found  a group, let them know that I try to chain pull the whole place (unless my random pug healer needs mana) and that I try to finish the instance before I have to buff myself/them again. This pug seemed to like that. Last night, I destroyed my personal best dps from a few nights ago by a lot!

The first run is where I started trying to run the instance as fast as possible, with downtime only coming when I’m running to the next pull or when my healer needs mana. I forgot to loot on occasion while doing this. I spammed consecration on every pull, every cooldown, but I rarely used Avenging Wrath. I know I could increase my dps by a lot more if I could remember to use my wings. My dps increased greatly on my last two speed runs. I never really paid attention to my dps until I realized I was 2nd on recount. I was used to putting out about 1400ish dps when I would look at the meters. This is fun now. I’m looking foward to my first run where my dps is over 2k!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: dps, heroic, Tanking, uk

• Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.

Blessing of Kings being a baseline talent is AWESOME. This is something the pally community has been raving about for ages.

• Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.

Exorcism being used in my normal rotation? Currently, Exorcism only works on the undead. I think I’ll need more mana for that!

• Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.

Shield of the Templar causing Avengers Shield AND Shield of the Righteous to cause a 3s silence? That sounds OP to me, even if it is prot pally only.  My guess is that the CD on SotR will be increased a bit.

• Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.

Very nice change. My 5/58/8 (or the most popular 5/60/6) will have at least 9 talent points freed up (giving back 5 from kings and 4/5 from the 2H weapon specialization). Will the tree be given MORE bloat or will prot pally’s be able dabble more in the ret tree for some added damage (and therefore threat)?

• Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.

So now there is a 100% chance to keep Divine Plea going every time I hit someone/something with my shield? Why do prot pally’s need spiritual attunement anymore?!

• Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.

This drops the CD of Hammer of Justice to 30seconds in itself, but there is another talent in the prot tree that further reduces the HoJ cooldown by 30s (for 3 talent points – but, with 3.1, will be only 1 talent point). This effectively gives pallys a 10second interrupt/stun. This seems overpowered (especially in PvP) to me and leaves me wondering what kind of nerfs HoJ will receive.

The only other change mentioned regarding pally’s is a huge nerf to Divine Plea. It’s impact on healing is being increase from a 20% reduction to 50%. The duration and cooldown remain the same however (source).

• Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
• In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.1, buff, nerf, pally, prot, protection

2nd in dps in 25man OS

Here are some other screenies of Dessara in her prot gear, with the Red Sword of Courage and it’s badass green glow (from Potency enchant).

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: heroic, obsidian sanctum, OS, prot, ret, screen shot, screenies

The 25-man Naxx/OS runs were very fun. I was the 3rd tank or the off-tank to the off-tank. Effectively, that means that I got to main tank Patchwerk (in Naxx) and pick up random adds in Naxx and OS! MTing Patchwerk was intense and full of awesome. Initially, a hunter misdirected him onto me and Patchwerk came running towards me. Something weird happened and he changed directions and began running to the dps and healer group. No worries, I just tossed an Avengers Shield and he was back onto me and the other two tanks. I blew every cooldown I have. Offensively, I used Avenging Wrath and Lavanthor’s Talisman on every CD. Defensively, Divine Shield and my Monarch Crab were my friends. I did die just as Patchwerk went down but other than that, it was a great fight.

My many hours in Heroic Naxx paid off as I ended up walking out of there with 3 drops! Some new hands, Gauntlets of the Disobedient, new belt (to replace the Emblem of Heroism belt that I’d only been using for a few days), the Ablative Chitin Girdle, and some new boots, the Inexorable Sabatons. I also walked away with 14 more Emblems of Valor. I tossed a few gems in there and I was good to go. I haven’t had a chance to re-enchant the gear however. For the gloves, I’m going back to Armsman and for the boots, Tuskarr’s Vitality (over Greater Fortitude).

Earlier in the day, I tanked Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle with my guild. The run was smooth until the last boss. I pulled the two mobs in the room and over vent, someone said “pull them back, they fear” and just as my finger touched the ‘S’ key to walk backwards, we get feared. The warlock’s felguard aggro’d the boss, who I taunted and picked up. The healer called for a wipe but I said “we can do it!” and we did! King Ymiron didn’t cast Bane once and I didn’t even have to kite him around the room like my first and only ever H UP run did. Best of all, I got my heavily coveted new JC meta-gem pattern, the Austere Earthsiege Diamond, and my Red Sword of Courage! I couldn’t believe the sword dropped on my first successful run through there.

Just yesterday, I MT’d 10-man Vault of Archavon. I was having issues knowing when to move him out of his fart cloud and also when I needed to taunt him off of the off-tank. As a reward for my role, I got my first tier 7 gear…the Heroes’ Redemption Greaves for my awesome holy set that I may or may not ever use.

I was also the lucky recipient of the Essence of Gossamer trinket from Heroic Azjol-Nerub. With the essence, my monarch crab and self-buffed with kings, I have just under 31,000 health!

After tanking so much lately, I have grown to really love it! I have noticed that I tend to watch my ability cooldown timers too much instead of focusing on the boss or trash. I need to change that. I have also gotten much, much better at keeping Holy Shield up 100% of the time (unless the charges run out before the CD is up).

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: defense, heroic, jewelcrafting, naxx, obsidian sanctum, prot, Tanking, trinket

I added a Solid Sky Sapphire gem and a Solid Dragon’s Eye gem to it and with the stam bonus, received an extra 137 stam from that trinket alone! Right now, I have 24,544 health. These numbers are based on the rules of 3.0.3.

Health Pool

Since 3.0.8 was [finally] released today, I get a few buffs to my gear. For my tanking helm, I currently have the Tempered Titansteel Helm.

3.0.3 helm stats

In this patch, this helm gets a new blue gem slot AND a meta gem slot. The blue gem will be filled with a Solid Sky Sapphire gem and the meta gem will be filled with a Austere Earthsiege Diamond. These two gems will give me 56 more stamina, for an additional 560 health.

3.0.8 helm stats

Also in 3.0.8 is a new bracer enchant that gives 40 stamina. So now I’m up to 96 more stamina or 960 health.

3.0.8 bracer stam enchant

Yet another change for prot pally tanks is that the prot talent Sacred Duty now gives 8% stamina (up from 6%). I don’t know the exact number that works out to in my current gear but I’m sure it will be enough to give me over 100 extra stamina (or 1,000 extra health).

All of these stamina increases will put me over 25.5k health, unbuffed! Whatever problems I had with my health pool are now over. I feel very good with the amount of health I have for tanking heroics.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, enchants, gear, gems, heroics, jewelcrafting, pally, prot, stamina, Tanking, tempered titansteel helm

Naxx

I raided Naxx with my guild on Friday and Saturday nights. On Friday, we did the Arachnid (achievement) and Plague (achievement) quarters. On Saturday, we did the Military (achievement) quarter and attempted the Construct quarter. On the Construct quarter, we downed Patchwerk and attempted Grobbulus a couple of times. We couldn’t get Grobbulus down since over 1/2 of the raid was lagging including our MT (who d/c’d on 2 of the attempts). We called the raid after the last wipe.

I walked out of Naxx with four drops, three of which are holy! The fourth drop was a cloak (that I will link when I am able to log into WoW) that is not any better than my current cloak. The holy pieces were Helm of the Corrupted Mind and two others that I’ll name and link when can log in to WoW.

Tanking

We were going to try and finish Naxx on Sunday night but couldn’t since one of our healers was having internet issues and couldn’t log in. We decided to split up into groups and do some heroics instead. Our MT has been wanting to respec ret and knows that I’ve been wanting to try my hand at tanking so we switched specs. I went with the most popular prot pally build (5/60/6) according to talentchic.com.

We attempted the first boss (Slad’ran) of Heroic Gundrak three times before skipping him in hopes of getting some emblems from two other bosses and then returning to him.

We downed the other bosses in the instance without a problem and went back to Slad’ran. We wiped on him once more before the freshly minted (read: very low dps) lock logged out and into his much better geared mage. After that switch was made, that boss was very trivial. Once attempt, one downing, altar switched and then it was onto the last boss, Gal’darah. The last boss was just as trivial as the others.

I got the achievement for completing Gundrak on Heroic. After reviewing the dps of my group (to myself), I commented that I should get the achievement for tanking my first heroic. Then I looted the boss and saw my achievement waiting: the Horn-Tipped Gauntlets! Those dropping was the icing on the cake for me.

The dps for the group was pretty low considering it was a heroic run. The top dps-er averaged ~1400 dps while the second was 1100ish. The fresh 80 lock averaged just over me, with 900ish dps. I rounded out the bottom with 823 dps (which I feel is extremely low for a WotLK tank).

I had a lot fun tanking that instance, despite the low dps of the group and the many wipes we faced. Tanking is a lot more hectic than dps but I’m ready to tank some more.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: epic, gear, gundrak, heroic, holy, naxx, naxxramas, raiding, ret, tank

Original:

75 stam enchant - courtesy of worldofraids.com

Nerfed version:

50 stam enchant - courtesy of worldofraids.com

This was talked about on tankspot.com as well.

In ret paladin related news, Vengeance was buffed from stacking 3 times (for 9% extra damage) to stacking 5 times (for 15% extra damage). That buff has been removed. Vengeance will still work the same as it does currently on live. Too bad, more damage is good. It’s always nice to see huge Judgement crits!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 3.0.8, enchant, Paladin Blogs, ptr, ret, stamina

I want my health to be 24,000 unbuffed.  I’ve been looking over the spreadsheet I made yesterday, trying to determine what I can get that will bump my health to at least 22k but much closer to the 24k mark.

After about an hour, I have created yet another spreadsheet that notes how I can almost reach my goal. I’ve found 197 extra stam, 41 extra defense and some other stats as well. I have a net increase of every stat across the board (I believe). The mats for these upgrades are very cheap in my opinion, especially for what I’m getting in return.

Notice that none of the gear I’ve listed includes either of the major stamina trinkets that jewelcrafters can create! Once I get that, I should be over 25k health!

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: 20000, 20k, gear, health, heroics, jewelcrafting, prot, stamina, tank, trinket, upgrades

This is all pre-raid gear since who know when I’ll step foot in Naxx, if ever. There are also tabs for enchants and gems.

© petewood for my everything else blog..., 2009. | Permalink
Post tags: gear, google docs, heroics, prot, spreadsheet