Double Rainbow – Perform a /gasp emote under the double rainbow in the Battle For Gilneas.
Who doesn’t like double rainbow across the sky?
A few days ago I announce to my guild that I am ending my raiding season in the Wrath of the Lich King. It is not due to issues with guild but issues with me. I am just burnt out. Raiding a few months after Wrath was released can mentally wear you out.
I had a heck of a good time and I hope the next expansion will just be as fun.
So to my raiding brethrens from KA guild on Cairne (formerly known as Initech….I kid, I kid) I wish ya’ll good luck with your continuous raiding schedule to finish up the ICC and Uludar Hardmodes.
What’s on my plate now…not much but just finish up leveling some of my alts and start new ones (alliance side) while I wait for Cataclysm.
Last week I finally took down the Lich King. Unfortunately we had a 30% buff but I guess a kill is a kill
I took a long hiatus from blogging due to RL. Now that everything is back to normal, I can start up again.
-Rudy
Blizzard Developer Chat on Twitter 4/16
Published April 17, 2010 Healing , Retribution , Tanking , World of Warcraft 1 CommentQ: Will healing hands be a paladin-centered tranquility, or something we have to run around to keep people in range of?
A: The idea is that it matters where the paladin is, so it won’t be raid-wide like Tranquility will be in Cataclysm. We will make sure the magnitude of the heal is sufficient that it’s a button the paladin wants to use. The cooldown and duration aren’t set in stone either.
I’m sure this will be a heal we’ll use but Blizzard worries me when they want the heal to be “sufficient”. I’m expecting a long cooldown (1min), a short duration (8-10sec) and low to semi-moderate heals.
Q: Now that paladin’s Holy Shock is baseline is there any plans to change the Art of War talent?
A: We like Art of War, so we don’t expect it will go away. We understand the concern that Holy Shock might compete with Art of War a little bit in terms of role (an instant damage spell) and that’s something we’re going to have to address.
I’m interested in seeing what they do here.
Q. What information/ideas can you share on PvP utility in the Retribution tree? Mandatory gap closer/interrupt question. Not having a cleanse will hurt.
A. Retribution paladins will be getting an interrupt.
I am curious to know if protection paladins can utilize this interrupt as well. Knowing Blizzard they will probably link the spell to Repentance which is too far for a tank to get.
While reading about the new mount over at WoW.com, I saw a response that made laugh.
Look at your toon, now look at me. Look at your toon again, now look back at me. Sadly, your toon isn’t me, but it can ride like me! Look down. Look up! There is the toon that you wish your toon could ride like. Look away. Look back! Here’s that shiny new pet that you love. Look again, the pet is now a mount!
I’m on a flying horse.
If you don’t get it, watch this video
Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure’s ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.
DISAPPOINTED!!! I was hoping for an interrupt for those pesky casters in PVE. I guess not
The spell itself is OK. It just seems situational because of the 2-second cast time.
As for holy, this spell will be a nice in PVP, especially for the Shockadin specs
Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.
This is a different version of the AoE healing spell than I thought; as well as others. I was hoping Blizzard converted consecration to deal damage and heal members within the radius of the consecration. I guess this will do. I like spell but the overall effectiveness will be determining by the radius and how many players benefit from it (i.e. only a limit get healed).
Overall this pushes Paladins to be close to the boss to heal the melee/tank.
Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).
Why do I have a feeling this will cause Forbearance because I cant see Blizzard allowing tanks to use Divine Protection and this guardian to absorb some incoming damage back to back.
I love the concept of this spell but I have a feeling it will be a gimmick spell nothing more.
Here are the remaining changes.
Changes to Abilities and Mechanics
· Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.
· Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.
· Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.
· Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.New Talents and Talent Changes
· We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.
· We feel Retribution paladins need one more mechanic which involves some risk of the player pushing the wrong button, making the rotation a bit less forgiving. In addition, we want to add to this spec more PvP utility. Right now the successes of the Retribution paladin in PvP seem to be reduced to either doing decent burst damage, or just being good at staying alive.
· We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.
· We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.
· Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.
· Protection paladins need a different rotation between single-target and multi-target tanking. Likewise, we’re looking to add the necessity to use an additional cooldown in each rotation.
· Holy Shield will no longer have charges. It will be designed to improve block chance while active, and will continue to provide a small amount of damage and threat.Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses
Holy
· Healing
· Meditation
· Critical Healing EffectMeditation: This is the spirit-to-mana conversion that the priest, druid, and shaman healers also share.
Critical Healing Effect: When the paladin gets a crit on a heal, it will heal for more.
Protection
· Damage Reduction
· Vengeance
· Block AmountVengeance: This is the damage-received-to-attack-power conversion that all tanks share.
Block Amount: We want to keep the kit of the paladin as a tank who blocks a lot. So by contrast, the warrior tank will sometimes get critical blocks, but the paladin will absorb more damage with normal blocks.
Retribution
· Melee Damage
· Melee Critical Damage
· Holy DamageHoly Damage: Any attack that does Holy damage will have its damage increased.
This concludes this Cataclysm preview for the paladin class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here.
[…]
Here’s a bit more clarification on some of these changes. Also, please keep in mind that this is merely a preview and we’ll still have more to go in testing up to and including any other changes that aren’t listed here in the preview.
We’ve updated the Flash of Light reference to make it a bit more clear in the original post as follows.
· Flash of Light remains a fast heal, but will be more expensive to justify the cast speed. Holy Light will be the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light needs to be changed so that its benefit is letting the paladin heal two targets at once, not letting the paladin get two heals for the mana cost of one. It’s intended to save GCDs and targeting time, not mana.In addition we’re changing the paladin heal design to match that of the other healers. Holy Light is the middle heal. It’s very efficient, but not particularly fast and doesn’t have a lot of throughput. Flash of Light will be the faster heal that costs more mana. (Currently paladins sort of flip the model around by having a fast, efficient heal.) Holy paladins can talent into an additional heal that is like a giant Holy Light. It might take three of these big heals (or two crits) to get a tank from death’s door back to 100% health.
Currently on live, Beacon of Light is a tool that allows paladins to target more than just the main tank. In Cataclysm if it just doubles their healing, it is going to be overpowered. We have two ways we might handle this and we’ll experiment to see which feels better. The first is that Beacon only works on some heals, such as Flash of Light or Holy Light (but not the big one). An alternative idea is that Beacon increases the mana cost of a heal cast on a beaconed target, since you’re essentially getting a double heal. Under this model, Beacon itself would cost no mana.
Also on the live realms currently, paladins have huge mana pools and massive throughput. The trade-off is that they are excellent single target healers and much weaker in other roles. We want paladins to be slightly more interchangeable with other healers. In Cataclysm, you should be able to have a Holy priest on the tank and a Holy paladin on the raid. We’re not sure we’ll back off of the current healing roles completely, but we definitely want to add more breadth to those whose roles are currently too narrow.
As for the Guardian of Ancient Kings. First, it’s important to understand that this is not a pet nor does it have a pet bar associated with it. Second, it’s also not meant to last for very long. So, it’s not a pet in the traditional sense. It’s a friend in need when you need it, but not a permanent companion.
Blizzard nerfed paladin’s health by lowering Sacred Duty stamina buff % from 2 / 4% Stamina, down from 4 / 8% Stamina.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22749574063&sid=1
The change is not as bad as it seems, but I sure hate to see nerfs spring up like this.
Oh well I guess my goal/quest to reach 50K health will take me a bit longer.
To encourage players not to shy away from the many invigorating adventures to be had in The Oculus, we have applied a change to enhance the rewards players are provided when selected for this dungeon via the Random Heroic option in the Dungeon Finder. Once Ley-Guardian Eregos is defeated, one loot bag per character will be provided in his chest in addition to the current rewards. Each loot bag will offer players rare gems, two additional Emblems of Triumph, and a chance of being rewarded the Reins of the Blue Drake. These fine treasures could be yours should you honor your fellow party members by besting the challenges contained within The Oculus! Keep in mind, however, that these extra loot bags will only be awarded to each party member if Oculus is selected by the Dungeon Finder when players choose the Random Heroic option.
In light of this change, the Reins of the Azure Drake will now have a chance of dropping in both 10- and 25-player versions of The Eye of Eternity
You can clean up a pig, put a ribbon on it’s tail, spray it with perfume, but it is still a pig.
I’m sorry Blizzard but adding more rewards in completing Oculus will not get me to go back. I have done my time and I do not want to experience that place again.
BTW I have done Oculus after the nerfs and yes the place is easier but I really don’t like that place.
The other day, I was part of a group that completed 3 dungeon in about 32 minutes.
We defeated all the bosses
Azjol-Nerub – 6 minutes
Nexus – 12 minutes
Gundrak – 14 minutes
I wish there were more groups like that.
The Holy Light 
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