Monday 25 May 2009

Class Leader

I am the Paladin Class Leader of XII. Although my mainspec is ofc Protection, I also know a lot of Holy. I read up on changes/gimmicks and all theorycrafting about those.

But, It has been a while since I played Ret. Today, I read, and read, and read...and respecced.

It is fun, FCFS-system, just look at the boss back, and whack away.

We did a fun naxx10-raid. I did 2.7-3.3k dps. Which considering my gear (now on armory :p), is not that bad.

My gear does need to loss around 3% hit though :p, but I grasp ret again.

Learning all paladin-specs part 3: Retridin.... completed :p

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Being an Officer

Sometimes you wonder, should you write stuff. There are people in XII who sometimes read this, so can I write every9ng? Well, this is my blog, so why not. These are my thoughts on some matters, and if 'someone doesn't like it, their loss.

/offtopic
I wonder how many read my blogs, not that it matters, I write mostly for myself, and hope sometimes people learn from it. I do know I have 2 frequent readers, Hi Jorky and Kemwer :p
/ontopic

Since summer 2007 I have been an officer, first in Retribution, then in XII (apart from the two months I had a RL-breakdown). Being an officer means you sometimes are the target of mockery, QQ and outright nasty things. You are a public character, and guildmembers ask you everthing, or hold you responsible for stuff.

I have been ridiculed on official forums, attacked on XII-forums, and every descision I publish on behalf of the officer-corps is broken apart, sometimes just for the fun of it. Actually not that different from my RL-job.

The problem is that there comes a time, where you dont't feel like you are appreciated. For what are you doing it? Is it fun? have been there several times, but honestly, for me, being an officer is as much part of the game, as doing instances. In the two months I wasn't officer, I was missing it in the end.

For XII, I have written dozens of bulletins, a lot of rulings, and even more theorycrafting-posts. Rules are needed in a guild, not becasue we like to give rules (well, that may not entirely be true :p), but because clarity is needed. Most rulings go towards raiding and loot-distribution, so we don't need to discuss that during precious raid-time. Discussing 15 minutes about a piece of gear is stupid.

XII has been slacking with rules lately, like we were slacking in Naxx :p. 10 days ago, we thightened the Leash again. Some officers were actually complaining about the lack of fun. Most of this loss was because off the lengthly discussions during raid, the constant bickering against officer-descisions.

Mind you, descisions made by officer are 99% of the time the culmination of multiple posts on the 'where-officers-gossip-about-the-rest-of-the-guild'-forum. And we also have something ingame called /officer. So 80% of suggestions made about strategies have already been discussed by officers, and rejected.

But no, talk on vent, and try to push your point even more.. go QQ towards officer. In the end, that will not help, only slow down the raid. The cach-phrase is: If the officer says go RIGHT, then you go RIGHT. If you think LEFT is better, YOU STILL GO RIGHT, and whisper the officer, if maybe LEFT isn't a better option. Don't expect an answer, but don't push it during raids, use forums for that.

At this moment the QQ in XII is towards our old rule : First Recipe Drop goes to an Officer. Reason: The recipes has a much larger chance to stay in the guild that way. The Ruling has been called a lot of things, but the most hilarious comment I thought was the one calling the ruling Selfish...yes Selfish.

Being an officer is a lot of things, but most of the time not selfish. We think about how to run the guild, even when we are not playing, we are posting frequently on forums (1k+ posts for me on XII-forums), and we like to MAKE fun for everyone, which is almost impossible. So yes, call us selfish, so we can laugh about it.

Oh, if selfish means that we are at the receiving end of QQ, then ok, we are selfish...

Luckily, I had my breakdowns already :p, and I now look at this much more from a distance. Go QQ me, the more you QQ, the less your option are viable. Like the boy that cried Wolf....


things to do:
Change Picture, I have some new gear.
Add some more links ro blog-roll
Make a post about Paladin-talents/specs, version 3.1

Monday 18 May 2009

Sometimes you get lucky.

Sunday, not at home, laptop present.
Problem is, laptops are small, so to go raiding with my laptop is a no-no. But just questing, no problem, or healing some instances.

At 11.00 in the morning Cloudchaser entered LFG Ramp/BF/SP as healer. 5 hours later I exited the same group, after we had run through Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbog and Mana-Tombs. We did had some breaks, that's why it took that long :p

It doesn't happen much, but when it happens its fun. A group that just stays together and goes questing instancing for several hours. We did wipe some times in MT, but that's not strange. MT is a lvl63-dungeon, and we where running with a 62-tankadin, a 62-tree (me), a 62-DK, a 63 Retri and a 66-frost mage. (most of us started a level lower :p). But a good group can handle it without problems, apart from some trash-over-pulls :p

Now I only need to return to do the quests....

And I love Wild Growth :p

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Block Cap

I am wondering, if you are tanking the boss, is Block-Cap still important?

I made an avoidance-set last night, where my avoidance is almost 55%, while I only have 13% block, leaving me 5% under blockcap. That means I can get hit.

In my avoidane-block-capped set, I have 1400 BV, shaving of 1400 of a 25k hit seems marginal, if he hits me again, I am still dead.. so should I still focus on blockcap for my boss-set. My avoidance is 50% in that set.

I also made a BV-set for add-packs, with 1500+BV, and being at 103.5% due to lot of blockrating, maybe I should exchange some avoidance for strengthgems in that set.

Oh my, min-maxing gear again... I like it.

Tuesday 12 May 2009

Altism

Gowron, lvl80 Blood Elf Paladin
Protection/Holy
levelled old-fashioned way

Lurge, lvl70 Undead Mage
Frost
Levelled old-fashioned way

Miriani, lvl80 Orc Hunter
Survival
Levelled with help off decreased experience needed

Mardah, lvl68 Night Elf Druid
Balance
Levelled with help off decreased experience needed

Cloudchaser, lvl58 Tauren Druid
Balance/Restoration
Levelled with help off decreased experience needed, and Bind on Account Shoulders

5 characters levelled to Outlands, by using a lot of 'old-land' instances....

(oh, I also have a DK, but they don't count as levelling :p)

Sunday 10 May 2009

Blade Warding

Ulduar gave us 2 new weapon enchants. One which gives a little health sometimes, and an avoidance-one:

Blade Warding:Permanently enchants a weapon to sometimes grant Blade Warding when striking an enemy. Blade Warding increases your parry rating by 200 and inflicts 600 to 800 damage on your next parry. Lasts 10 sec.

It does look nice, but there seems to be a little problem.

What do we know so far about this.
(and I have read several posts about this, most notably on Maintankadin)

1. Blade Warding DOES stack.
2. If you parry, all stacks are consumed.
3. It procs on ' white' hits.
4. It procs on Hammer of the Righteousness
5. It seems to have a procrate 1 ppm for ' white' hits, increased to 1.33 ppm considering HotR
6. For warriors, the procrate seems to be 1.77 ppm (they have more abilities it procs on)
7. This is not a TPS-enchant, it does a little damage, but that can be ignored.
8. Over the course of a fight, it gives around 0.4% avoidance for Paladins.

Now lets compare that to the other avoidance-enchantment out there. The 26-agility one.
Agility is always on, and gives around 0,35% avoidance, and some armor of course.

So the difference between the two is 0.05% avoidance against some armor.

But, Blade Warding is a proc-enchant. And in my experience, they always happen when you don't need them. While Agility is always on. And as a Tank, I don't like to depend on procs. It may help you ones or twice, but imho, a constant enchant will help you more often. But still, if the proc is very good, I'll take the proc.

But really, does anyone think, that 0,05% more avoidance is VERY good? And considering the fact that agility also gives a little bit more armor, my money would be on 26 agility. In the end, this will give more avoidance, by a long shot, because it is always on.

It maybe more worth to warriors, that's for them to find out, but for Tankadins, it seems not worth the effort to get.

Bottomline:

If you want reliable avoidance: Take 26 Agility

And for the record, my Last Laugh is enchanted with accuracy (12hit/crit). That is a TPS-enchant, not an avoidance one :p

Thursday 7 May 2009

Caps

For the Record: THERE IS NO DEFENSE-CAP

A cap means that if you take more of that stat, it won't help you anymore.

There's a Block-Cap, 102.4% total miss+dodge+parry+block+5%, after which block is useless.
There's Spell-hit-cap, 17%.
There's Melee-hit-cap, 8%, for non-dual-wielders.
There's a dual-wield-melee-cap, which is very high, 32% or something??
There are 2 expertisecaps, one for dodge (around 3.25%) and one for parry (around 6.75%).
There is a resistance cap, 415 if I am not mistaken.

But there is no defense-cap, 540 defense means you are uncrittable, but defense does more than just providing that. It also gives some block/parry/dodge. And because it gives all of the three, it's one of the best stats to get to the elusive Block-Cap. Only after you reach block-cap, you should value dodge more, and after dodge, parry. Dodge scales better then Parry towards avoidance, until around 600 dodge-rating.

There's no defense-cap, only a defense-minimum.