Patch Day

Well, not as much d/c's as I was expecting, and XII was eager to try all the new skills, so there went 25 brave souls to Mount Hyjal.

My UI was as basic as you can get, only added Omen, DBM and Pallypower. And the nice thing about the default UI is that its 24 buttons wide... exactly what you need for the 969-rotation.

So here comes the trash, and I was spamming consecration, Avengers Shield, HotR and Holy Wrath (instant now), and the first packs went down within 30 seconds.... no manaproplems whatsoever.

And there came Rage, picked it up at the top of the hill, and start spamming my buttons..and after 2 cucles, my mana was low... but my threat was skyhigh, I think about 40-50% more then number 2 on the list.

After getting focused again after a server-shutdown, we downed Anetheron in 4 minutes 39 seconds....

And 25 minutes later Kaz, lay death, I was not tanking Kaz, just melee-ing with JoW and Sow... SP in tyhe raid.... And NO ONE died of the mana-burn... normally only 3-4 stay alive there...

And now the hard numbers:
Strength : 513 (+382)
Agility : 105 (+6)
Stamina : 1283 (-54)
Intellect: 101 (-110)
Spirit : 102 (+6)
Armor : 17619 (-301)
Damage : 477-591 (was 81 - 197)
Speed : 2.60 (was 1.80)
Power : 1246 (+793)
Hit Rating : 44 (+44)
Crit Chance : 14,36 % (+9,75%)
Expertise : 11 (+6)
Bonus Damage: 384 (-103)
Spell Hit Rating : 44 (+22, no longer spellhit, just hitrating)
Spell Crit Chance : 5,46% (-0,50%)
Mana Regen : 47 (-18)
Defense : 484 (-15)
Dodge : 26.54% (+1,86%)
Parry : 16,67% (-1,36%)
Block : 20,25% (-0,48%)
Resilience : 12 (just enough to stay uncrittable)
Health Points: 16027 (-690, a lot :( )
Mana : 4188 (-1650..like I care)

I did needed to change some gear, I changed my:
belt (was crafted spelldamage, now BoJ-warrior)
sword (was pinky hammer, now Season2 PvP-sword)
shield (was runeshield, now the zul-aman)
chest (was 2.3 BoJ-reward, now 2.4 BoJ reward)

And I maybe should change the Pocketwatch to the Beerfest Auto-Blocker...

All in all, I lost a lot of health, but gained a lot of threat,
avoidance still is roughly the same, but with 1200 AP, I can actually do some damage.
Need to find out how much on mobs...

Oh, and the 969-rotation needs me to hit a button every Global Cooldown... I need to get used to that, and find a lay-out to make it easy to do...

laters.

Respeccing....again

This will be my new spec today:

NEW SPEC

I did not take the abilities that mentioned Shield of the Righteousness, ShotR will be available at lvl75...which I am not :p

The road to the tier6-talents
Well, lets do a run down.
Divine Strength 5/5 ; Anticipation 5/5 ; Toughness 5/5 ; Imp. Righteous Fury 3/3 , you will take at first. But you need 25 points to get to the tier6-talenst, you just spend 18, and 1 will go in Sanctuary, leaving 6 points.
The tier4 talents are all good talents, although Divine Guardian can be a suicide-talent :p. Hammer of Justice now also functions as an interupt, and Imp. Devo Aura doesn't stack with the tree-aura, and you still have Kings to consider..
I am leaning towards Imp. HoJ 3/3 and Imp. Devo 3/3, mostly because I have already been without Kings several months, and I am specced maintank, not buff-monkey :p.

I put ONE point into Imp. Judgement for the new 969-rotation for Tankadins (more later I suppose), and the point in Seals of the Pure are offcourse for more damage/threat.

When WotLK really hits, I'll spec like this: Levelling-spec
This spec puts a lot of points in mana-saver, which means faster levelling.

And probably I'll end here: Level 80-spec
Yes, one point still floating.. but there are rumors, Blizzard will give us a new 11-point talent, which is really missing now.

....more later.

Seals/Judgement and Gowron pre-3.0

No internet at home, but I'll will give a quick rundown on seals/judgements from memory, and sorry, no tooltips this time.

Judgements... yes plural, you will now have 3 different spells called judgement of justice/wisdom/light, instead of the spell called judgement. Each Judgement will place the apprioate debuff on your target for ?? minutes, and it will NOT refresh if you hit it. If you use a judgement, there will be a damaging factor depending on the current seal you have up. The Seal will not go away after casting a judgement, it is now a longer-lasting selfbuff.

Some Seals have been reworded to Hand-spells, so they no longer conflict with seals (Hand of Protection/Hand of lets-keep-running), these are still short-lasting self-buffs.

Seal of Vengeance (the tanking seal) will be available for Horde
Seal of Blood (the dps-seal) will be available for Alliance
(both get other names for the other side)

Cya later (they say my internet is incoming now :p)

oh, and these are the stats for Gowron... pre-3.0
unbuffed, 0/40/21-specced

Strength : 131
Agility : 99
Stamina : 1337 (Leet :p)
Intellect: 211
Spirit : 96
Armor : 17918
Damage : 81 - 197
Speed : 1.80
Power : 453
Hit Rating : 0
Crit Chance : 4,61%
Expertise : 5
Bonus Damage: 481
Spell Hit Rating : 22
Spell Crit Chance : 5,96%
Mana Regen : 65 (no in combat mp5)
Defense : 499
Dodge : 24,68%
Parry : 18,03%
Block : 20,73%
Resilience : 0
Health Points: 16717 (hehe)
Mana : 5838

WotLK.. a whole new maintankadin way on threat.

After some research, and some more, I am finally ready to make this post :p

First lets start with the new ability we get at level 75:
Shield of the Righteousness [ooh, tooltips].
It does holy damage equal to your Block Value

And now lets look at some well-known talents of the Tankadin:
Seal of Righteousness,Seal of wisdom,Avenger's Shield

ShotR clearly states that is uses Block Value for Threat.
The 'Old' Seals will be using both Spellpower (SPH=Spellpower Holy) and Attack Power.

So first up, we still want spellpower.. but we got a nifty new talent called Touched by the Light, which gives us 30% of our stamina as Spellpower. Looking at Gowron with 1337 stamina at the moment, that will translate into 401 spellpower, which is 123 lower then what I now have.. but still, for 3 talent points, 400 spellpower... WOW. All our damage is still holy, so this adds nice to threat. But... do we really want spellpower on our gear now... NO we don't.

Meat your new friend for tanking, it's called Strength :p,
first the hard figures:
2 Strength = 4 Melee Attack Power = 1 Block Value
but, wait, add Divine Strength,Improved Blessings of Kings and we get a new formula:
2 Strength = 5 Attack Power = 1.25 Block Value.
So not only will strength scale better with every damaging tool we have, it also increases the BV to a great length, which we now also use for threat.

Blizzard has changed all the stats on Spelldamage Gear for Tankadins to reflect this, all of them have now Strength, and No Spellpower... but... our spelldamage-weapons will be absolete.. they will ofc not be changed, they still can be used, but we got a Tier11-talent which actually says, get rid of spellpower weapon, and get a def/stam high dps-weapon.... Hammer of the Righteous.
You want a HIGH DPS-WEAPON for this, and most of the spellpower weapons only have a DPS of around 40.... I hope to get me the S2-sword, but any 'Warrior'-tanking weapon will probably do, get a dps of around 100, and you are settled methinks.

So here you have it, Think Strength, Not Spellpower.

Oh, and we will be loosing 20 defense, because Anticipation now gives dodge instead of Defense... another reason to get the S2-sword, to remain uncrittable. And we dont have to worry about crushing blows anymore, only mobs FOUR levels higher then you can crush... and Raid bosses are considered to be 73...err, 83 :p

Next up... Seals and Judgements...

WotLK...changes

Lets start with a fast breakdown of the paladin-class we have known in TBC, and what probably will happen to them in WotLK. Essentailly we have several compeletely different paladins, the Healadin, the Tankadin and the Retridin.
Healadins
Now: The best single-target healers of the game, and the worst multi-target healers. Also have problems healing when they need to move, no HoT's (heal-over-time). Most Holy Paladins are specced 41/20/0, the 20 points in protection are needed to get to Imp. Concentration Aura, and by doing that, Healadins tend to have BoK (Blessing of Kings).
Soon: The best single-target healers of the game, not very good at multi-target healing, and still no HoT's. The WotLK Holy Paladin will NOT have BoK anymore, instead they will spec into Retribution to get 8% more crit from conviction and sanctified seals.
Also: It may be wise to look at the old Shockadin-build again, when dipping into retribution, it may become viable again. Shockadins normally go for Holy Shock and then go to retribution, to be reasonable effective healers, and also reasonable damage-dealers with Holy Shock.

Tankadins
Now: The best AoE-tank you can get (Area of Effect), almost no CC (crowd control) needed in instances. T4 and lower they have a hard time to get uncrushable, gimping stamina and other survavibility for it, but T5 and on they are equal to any other tanking-class. Most of the tankadins are specced 0/49/12, where 41 points in protection are needed to get the Avengers Shield, the tool to frontload a lot of aggro.
Soon: The best AoE-tank you can get (Area of Effect), almost no CC (crowd control) needed in instances. It seems that WotLK is not yet sure about the new tankadins, they are the class/spec who needs to relearn evrything, no more spelldamage, but strength and blockvalue is needed now. First reports seem to point out that the tankadin-survavibility is 'again' the lowest of all tanking-classes. The new placement of BoK, makes it not a needed talent for tankadins at the moment.
Also: The Sanctity-spec seems to be dead with WotLK, but further research is needed.

Retridins
Now: Well..now... today they do reasonable damage, after 2.4 they no longer need spelldamage, but rely only on strength and crit. At the moment they are raid-worthy, which wasn't true for the 1.5 years before, where the spec was purely PvP.
Soon: OMFGIHAVEBEENCRITTEDTODEATHBYTHEFREAKINGRETRIDIN :p, but it seems they are balanced at 80. And they seem to be the only spec who actually have points left after all the neccessary talents, so they probably be picking up BoK. So, they will remain raid-worthy... or even needed for judgement of the wise, they also get a longer CC with a 1 minute Repetenance.


And in Wow:
We are now in phase 4 of Kael'Thas, but WotLK is coming. I will be moving soon, and I still need to prepare for Wrath. Gowron should be a level 350 Blacksmith at least, but preferably 370 or something like that. My Hunter should be level 68, so she can go to Northrend. I think I will shelf Ezrila and Lurge for a while. Lurge just spend his points on the S2-staff. Gowron is hunting for the S2-sword, the resilience will help towards uncrit. Ezrila, well, I dont know what to get for the points...
I also have something else running....

E-peen, and preparing for WotlK

E-peen...

Saturday Night-Raid...oh-oh
Target: Void Reaver/Solarion
Starting Tank: Me (ofc)
Other Tanks: Cardassian (feral),Ork (warrior), Bloodqueeni (holy respecced to prot).
Gear-changes: T4-helmet instead of Zul'Amans, 2.4 BoJ-reward instead of 2.3
Self-buffs: BoSanc,Spelldamage-food, Spelldamage-Flask
Speldamage:688 (or 668...whatever)
Spec:0/40/21 (the Wordli-Sanctity-Threat-spec)
Times I lost Aggro: ZERO
Conclusion: Void Reaver is a One-Maintankadin-Fight.

Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King:
When I started Gowron as my first Horde-character, I made him enchanter/tailor *gasp* , YES, he was a tailor, and trust me, those big bags I could make, made levelling a lot easier. When Lurge (herb/alch) reached 70, I changed the herbalism and tailoring between them. So Gowron has been a flowerpicker for a while now, which ofcourse doesn't help for raiding.
So, now WotlK lies ahead, and Gowron needs a new profession...so I thought about the professions which could help him...after some thought 3 remained.
1. Mining, because of the Stamina-boost
2. Blacksmithing, extra gem slots on weapons/gear...mmmm
3. Engineering, Helmet, and a gathering-tool
So what to choose..
Well, my Hunter just reached 70, and she is herbalism/mining, so I already have a mining-character... 2 remain.
In the end I choose for the one that would probably boost my raiding the most. Engineering only gives one big boost for that (the Helmet), BS several more, due to gem-slots and other gear...so...yesterday...I spend cloose to 600g, emptied all my stacks of ore/bars, and Gowron is now a Blacksmith.
And I am poor, on all my characters, luckily some weeks remain, to do dailies, and to level up to 350-375. And maybe the RBoB will drop for me :p

I will be prepared.

Of course, I had to send all non-BoP stuff to an alt... so, with absolutely no buff-food/flasks/oil I was called in to tank the shammy at karatresh.... one-shotted.

Next Blog: WotlK and Tankadins.... a whole new live, or WTF Strength???

WotlK

Something about a brain-session:

...forget all you have learned....
...strength is good...
...attack power is good...
...you can do damage...
...you will see 1k dps from you...